And the waiting game continues....
It's so hard to wait patiently; you just want to know whether or not the agents like your work, or even want to look at it! Querying has definitely taken my patience to a whole new level. I think the hardest part is that of the nine queries I have out right now, only four agents will definitely respond within their respective time periods; the other five will only respond if they're interested. And also, it's hard because a few of the agents got back to me right away, so when some of them don't respond right away (probably because they're understandably busy), even though they haven't gone beyond their stated response time, I automatically think "Oh my goodness they probably hate it and rejected me already and I just don't know it!" Needless to say, I still check my email everyday, multiple times a day!
But I love when I'm able to do things that get my mind of the querying process (besides school and homework of course). Yesterday I started tutoring a young boy named Omarion, who is a fourth grader at an inner city charter school in a town nearby my college. It's through a tutoring program that one of my friends started this year, and even though I just started yesterday I'm really excited to continue doing it next semester! It was his first day at the program as well, so I think we're a perfect tutor-student match for each other! He's really sweet and polite, so I was so happy to help him with multiplication yesterday (he didn't have any homework, so we just went over his 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 times tables for an hour since he said he had the most difficulty with those). I've tutored before in high school (both kids around his age and high school students), so it felt really good to be able to get back into it! :D
Oh, and you know how I was stressing out about re-reading my manuscript one more time? Well I did last weekend. Granted I only took two days to go through it (literally 14 hours each day; that's like ALL that I did Sunday and Monday), I found SO MANY silly mistakes!!!!! So as soon as I was done on Monday (well, more like early Tuesday morning), I sent it to the agent who had requested my full manuscript only a week previously (which is another reason why I wanted to send it too him sooner rather than later, in case he'd already started reading the old copy or was about to); and I was honest with him (just basically saying I found stupid mistakes that I just couldn't expect him to read through...). He didn't respond to the email, so hopefully he got it, and hopefully he'll look at the new manuscript....and I didn't change the plot at all when I edited, it was just the sentence phrasing, spelling, things like that (though I'm sure it's not "perfect" in that a few errors throughout a 300+ page manuscript is probably inevitable).
But yeah, at first I wasn't going to because I saw someone ask a similar question about re-sending a manuscript to an agent if you find mistakes, and everyone (being like 4 people) was telling him not to (granted this person only had a few mistakes in the last few chapters, whereas mine were throughout!). So I didn't; but then something told me to look it up again to see what other people thought, and I found an actual agency who answered this question, basically saying that I should do whatever I feel is right (since it's obviously eating away at me for a reason, and you don't want to regret not at least trying if the agent were to turn down your work, you know?). So that was enough of a push for me to resubmit my manuscript, so fingers crossed he accepts it and he likes it! :)
And I thought it'd be fun to give you guys a little "query update" at the end of my posts whenever I can, so here's the first one!
Query update:
Full Requests (that are currently out): 1
Partial Requests (that are currently out): 0
Rejections: 5
Responses (that I'm currently waiting for): 9
X <3 O
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yay!! You're getting closer, that's a good thing! No author's life is complete without a few rejections, and you still have nine more agents that you're waiting to get back to you! That's really good, and you also have a FULL request out there! YAY, again!
ReplyDeleteAnd rereading your manuscript probably was a good idea if you found silly mistakes. Anything to increase your chances of getting published, right? I also totally understand your anxiety when you're talking about getting rejections and stuff. It's very stressful and I always go into overboard! :)
Tutoring little kids is awesome! I don't do it, but I may pick it up soon...that is, if I actually had the patience to teach people math and stuff, which I really don't.
But anyways, good luck with the rest of your responses and the full request! Still crossing my fingers and toes for you!
That's true; most, if not all, authors experience rejection at some point in their careers! Haha yeah; hopefully he likes my full (preferably the new one I sent him). I knew that I if I didn't send him my newly edited manuscript I would be getting very little sleep for the next few months...and then I wouldn't be getting any sleep AT ALL and I'd be kicking myself as well for the rest of my life for not even trying to send him the new copy if he rejects me, you know?
ReplyDeleteI love tutoring! You should really try it...unless you have no patience...but you must if you want to become a singer! Haha, but really, it's really fun and it's really rewarding for everyone involved; the kids are usually so cute and you can't help but want to help them as much as possible! Although, it's not for everyone...
Thank you so much for your support Eileen! And my fingers and toes are also crossed for you!!!! :D
Lack of sleep is a horrible thing, true, and you did the right thing for sending the revised manuscript in! You should always take a chance.
ReplyDeleteAs for patience, I have it whenever it pertains to singing, at least, my patience lifespan is a LOT longer! But when it comes to other things, I usually can only take it for maybe a few minutes, and then I'm not exactly patient. Well, actually, I'm very patient in most cases, but whenever it comes to my brother or family, I seem to snap a lot easier for some reason. Maybe it's because my entire family is pretty short-tempered. ;)
Thanks! I'm at peace with my decision :)
ReplyDeleteHaha you sound like you have the same amount of patience as my brother! I'm actually the same way now that I think about it: I'm very patient pretty much all the time except when it comes to my family where it really is a lot easier to snap. But I can slowly but surely feel my patience wearing thinner and thinner as I get older...not good.
Haha I guess since you can't get in too much trouble with your family it's easier to snap at them and easier to get snapped back at but for them to keep talking to you afterwards. If you start fighting with your friends, then there's a chance they'll start to studiously ignore you for the rest of your life. :p
ReplyDeleteHaha that's very true :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by my blog, J.B. And congrats on that full! I bet the agent will be glad to look at the edited one for you. :) BTW, have you ever heard of QueryTracker.com? It has some great forums over there for publishing questions of all kinds. Sending up good vibes for that MS!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome Anita! Thanks for stopping by mine as well! :D
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! I'm really excited about the full (edited) MS...hopefully I'll have some good news to share with you soon. :)
I have been on QueryTracker.net a couple of times, and it's helped me confirm that some of the agents I sent e-queries to did in fact accept emails. However, I haven't used it much more than that because I'm not a member.
The main site I've been going to is absolutewrite.com because the forums there have really been helpful in allowing me to not only see the experience other people have had with the agents I want to query, but also help me gather a strong group of agents to query because it's difficult to find agents that even consider a dark fantasy manuscript (since a lot of agents either want horror or fantasy, but not both).
But thank you so much for the advice! I'll definitely dig into QueryTracker a little bit more! :D