Well, um, blah

So back in February I sent out a bunch of queries to agents for my novel. One requested the full, but on an exclusive basis. As the full was already out to two places, one agency and one rather high-end publishing house, I asked if it would be okay to wait. She said certainly.

So I waited. The publishing house declines (if you've read any of my earlier post, you may know the silver lining to that, so I won't go into it here), and the agency takes forever.

And ever.

And ever.

Until finally, it's September, and I e-mailed them politely asking if they've made a decision. Finally they say no. Okay, all well and good. So I e-mailed the exclusive agent and ask if she still would like it. The first thing she asks, is if the publishing house turned me down.

Um, okay. She didn't even know they were reading the manuscript unagented before she requested the full, and even though it impressed her when I told her about it in my e-mail asking if she could wait, so I don't know why it's an issue now, but sure, why not. I tell her no. She asks for the first two chapters again. The same two chapters she's read before. Understandable. It's been six months. She's probably forgotten them. I send them along.

Got an e-mail a few hours ago rejecting it. Same two chapters she's read before. Same two chapters she praised with specific words. The e-mail was also a form one, and, in my opinion, patronizing (the standard, don't give up! spiel).

The manuscript is flawed. I'm the first to admit this. It should not have been sent out when it was sent out, and I probably burned some bridges with this (but not many, because most of them have probably forgotten my name by now anyway, so re-querying will most likely not be a huge deal). Officially, no one has it right now, and I am working on another project that I have more faith in and have vowed to concentrate on until it's complete and people I trust have read it. I'm still young, and this is a huge learning process for me. I don't want to take a break from submitting (well, submitting FINISHED stuff, anyway), because I know I'm already on the right track to getting accepted and taking a break would be like saying that I'm not ready. I am ready. I just need a PIECE that's ready.

What I'm trying to say in this half-asleep rant is that I wasn't expecting, at this point of revelation that the manuscript is flawed, that it would get accepted, but gosh, you've accepted the first two chapters before. Why would you read the EXACT SAME WORDS and suddenly not want them?

That's some ultra long case of it. It took her almost two months to get back to me this time.

JudScotKev said:

It's proof that this is a pretty arbitrary game, and certainly WAY too profit-oriented.

Everybody says, write a great book, as if that's all there is to it. But there's all the intangible stuff you can't control. The mind game, of an agent trying to psych out an eidtor, who's trying to psych out the buying public, who mostly buys whatever their friends say is cool, anyway. And then, once you're in the Club of published writers, you can certainly get away with being less than perfect.

Yeah, I agree. She blew it.

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Even first-time authors aren't always perfect. It is a marketing game, I completely agree, because while you need something that's well written, obviously, you need something that will also sell. So I suppose sometimes an agent or an editor will settle for a happy medium, which makes me sad, but that's not really the topic for today XD

Yeah, next time I won't hype myself up so much, lol. I didn't think she'd expect more from this than I did, and that I would end up being the realistic one. Oh well.