| PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: First for Love, Second for Filthy Lucre. |
Okay, folks. Some of you out there in aspiring-writer-land have been with us since the beginning.
You’ve spent over a year querying your little hearts out, despite the endless rejection from agents.
We've gotten emails from you, wondering after 120 queries and no offers of representation, if maybe it's time to quit querying...
Our answer is simple: what else have you written lately?
If your answer is: Well, duh…nothing! I’ve been too anxious chewing off my own foot every time Ms. Big-Time Agent
requests a partial, then a full. I mean, I can barely breathe at night, much less concentrate on writing something new
(and, by the way, it took me over three years just to finish the first one and I don’t know if I have it in me to do that again.)
Our answer: yes, you need to stop querying. Immediately. Especially if all you have to show for the past year is over 120 queries to agents, no offers of rep, and nothing new written.
Success in this business isn’t about brilliance. But it’s not about perseverance either. It’s about luck and endurance.
Talent is optional. Perseverance is fool’s gold.
Perseverance keeps writers querying the same project to as-many-agents-who-will-say-"no" as possible while simultaneously producing zero new work.
Endurance, however, is what keeps writers in the game for the long-haul, project after project. And no, it won't get easier to write new work once you get an agent. Or once you're published. Or once you become a best-seller...
We know how you feel... you're reluctant to give up on your first novel because quitting means you accept all the rejection. But it doesn't mean you accept that your writing is crap.
If you’ve been getting requests from agents for fulls after they've read partials, then obviously your writing isn’t crap.
But the truth is: most first novels aren’t always marketable. And there's a big difference between good and marketable.
Think about it. We bet while you were writing your first novel you didn’t even know there was a market—-an established publishing market that “little-nobody-you” actually had the chance to break into.
Heck, you just wrote your story because it was fun, not because you knew how to play the publishing game. Well, now you know how to play, so go find that FUN again and start writing your second novel.
Even if it means quitting the querying process for the first one.
We write the first novel out of love. We write the second one to sell…
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