The Dream

Oh, to become a published author. For the past year, this had been my goal. My dream. And in three, deliriously naive months spent slaving away in the cool dankness of my basement, I managed to pound out an astounding 102,000 words! From beginning to end, I did it. I completed the first draft of my debut masterpiece! The next Great Canadian novel—or so I had thought. But nothing—and I mean nothing—could have prepared me for the emotional rollercoaster I would soon ride in my attempt to achieve said goal.

Of course I spent another couple of months tightening, cutting, editing, adding, and re-writing the entire manuscript until I was certain it was next to Godliness; a bestseller for sure.

I would dream of the six figure, three-book deal a large publishing house would offer upon reading my manuscript. I envisioned book signings, readings, and feature film deals. (I could almost hear the fans chanting my name!) I pictured myself schmoozing with the celebrities cast to play the characters I had so lovingly created. And, for the first few months of querying literary agents, I truly believed this dream would come true.
With my completed manuscript locked safely away on my hard drive, I began researching the big, bad world of publishing. With the help of websites like Query Tracker, Agent Query, and the forums of The Absolute Write, Water Cooler, I discovered that first and foremost, I would need to seek representation from a literary agent. (Most authors opt for this route, rather than querying publishing houses directly. Typically, the larger publishing houses won’t accept unsolicited proposals or queries.) And to entice an agent to even consider my manuscript, I had to write an amazing query!

Query me this

Write your query letter as if it were the description on the back cover of your book. This is the advice given by experts, and while this may seem easy enough, don’t be fooled; query letters are the bane of many author’s tortured existence! Even seasoned writers dread writing them.
Besides formatting and content, there are many rules one must follow when writing a query letter:
•    It must be formatted as a professional business letter.
•    It must contain the author’s contact information, as well as the agent’s contact information.
•    It must contain a hook; a one liner that captures the essence of your story.
•    And, as stated above, it must contain a two or three paragraph synopsis of the story itself, (fashioned much like the back cover of a novel). This has to be well written and succinct, and contain no more than two or three character names from the story. It has to make the agent or assistant take notice and want to see more.

The query letter is also the time to toot one’s own horn. If you have previous publishing credits to your name, the query letter is the place to mention them.

With all of this new-found knowledge, I wrote my query letter. And re-wrote it. And probably wrote it another thirty times—no joke! In fact, I spent more time crafting my query letter, than I did writing the entire manuscript! Writing this letter had become an obsession. There were times when I would get out of bed at night, or pull over onto the side of the road, just to scratch down onto paper an alternate beginning or a new and improved hook. But after countless re-writes, I was finally satisfied with my query. Finally!

And so it begins….

I compiled a list of agents, researched each one in great depth—their likes, dislikes, how they wished to be queried (email or snail mail), and any sales they may have already made. I then began the querying process, querying a few agents at a time. The waiting game had begun.

For an impatient person, such as myself, waiting was one of the hardest things to endure. At first, I’d literally check my email every few minutes—which nearly drove me to the brink of insanity—, but as the months passed by, and my optimism slowly faded, I attempted to concentrate on other things—like writing the next Great Canadian Novel.

Usually, I’d receive one, maybe two form rejections per week, but there were times when weeks would pass without hearing a peep from a single agent. And then, almost two months after the querying process had begun, I received my first partial request from a real, honest-to-goodness New York literary agent! She wanted to see the first three chapters and a complete synopsis of the entire manuscript! I was on top of the world: This was it! An agent had taken interest in MY query, plucked from the slush pile. Once again, dreams of book deals and signings danced in my head. And while I’d love to report a happy ending to this tale, one in which the agent fell head-over-heels in love with my manuscript and begged me to allow her to represent my masterpiece, the entire process ended with a rejection.

This scenario would repeat itself another seven times. Each time, like the one before, I would cross my fingers and pray for a miracle. And while there are still three agents who are currently reviewing my manuscript, the realist in me can already guess what the outcome will be.

Lessons learned

I’ve read that every great writer should have at least one manuscript collecting dust in their basement—preferably their first. So for now, that is where mine shall retire. And surprisingly, I’ve made peace with that. But through all of this, I have learned many things. I have learned that I love and need to write, and that I will never give up on my dream. I’ve also learned that, like anything else in life, I must practice my craft.
I’ve learned that while mothers and best friends are supportive in their opinions, critical beta readers or writing groups can be the difference between good writing, and phenomenal writing.

I’ve also come to realize that the publishing world can be very subjective (as I’ve been told, in the countless form rejection letters I have received), and that while I may have enough of those letters to wallpaper a wall, it only takes one agent to see the potential in an unpublished writer, like myself.

So I’ll continue on, in the hopes of someday realizing my dream. And in the words of a newly agented friend of mine, “Never give up! Never surrender!”

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