Throwing in the Towel: Why I'm Not Querying the Rest of the Year

Hello Funny People,

This post is going to be a bit of a downer, so if that's not your thing, consider this your warning. It's been a wild nine months, but I've made a decision that, as hard as it for me to admit defeat, is probably for the best. For the time being anyway.

So after working hard to find an agent willing to pick up one of the two projects I've been querying since January, I decided that the best thing for me to do now is simply to stop. I've been contemplating this decision for a little while, thinking that a temporary hiatus would be enough, but I'm not one for half-measures. So, as of the end of September, I'm withdrawing from the query trenches.

Exactly why I am is a bit more complicated, but here are a few reasons.

1) Emotionally, I'm exhausted. I'd thought enduring the submission process for short stories had toughened me up enough to deal with the constant barrage of nos that I knew querying would involve. I was wrong. There's something harsher about querying something you've spent months or years trying to make good only for it to be turned down because someone you don't know says your first 5 to 50 pages "aren't strong enough," (whatever TF that means). Nine solid months of sending these manuscripts out, time and again, thinking this time for sure, this agent for sure, has left me ragged and I need time to recover 

2) I want to finish this new novel. Despite my overwhelming lack of success on the querying front, I'm still writing. Like my colleague Gabino Iglesias says, "Not writing is not an option." After struggling to find my way into this book these last nine months, I finally have a good head of steam after realizing what this book needed to be itself. Now, I want to give it my full attention and finish a first draft before years end. I don't feel I can do that if I'm concerned with whether or not someone is going to turn down my work and shatter my confidence. All my energy should go where I where it will do the most good for me, and right now, that place is this new book.

3) Practically Speaking, Agents Don’t Want What I'm Offering Right Now. I have scanned and studied at least 200 hundred agent Manuscript Wishlists by now, and time and again, I keep seeing the same handful of phrases. "Cozy Fantasy". "Romantasy." "Grounded Science Fiction." "Dark Academia." None of which can even remotely apply to my stuff at the moment. I have nothing against any of these subgenres (hell, I write cozy fantasy from time to time), but what they're looking for isn't what I have. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, as much as publishing says all they want are "good stories," what they really want is stuff that will make them money. And because, as the late William Goldman said, nobody knows anything, they don't know what will make them money. Like their much maligned and ridiculed Hollywood counterparts who get criticized for the endless parade of remakes, sequels, and prequels they've been pumping out relentlessly over the last couple of decades (with more still in the pipeline), the only things that they know (or at least believe), will make them money is what sold well last time, meaning within the last two years. Publishing is a business, and like any good capitalist enterprise, they follow the money. Agents make money on commission, which means they won't pick up anything they don't think will deliver that commission, and the things they believe will do that (at the moment) are stories that match the above labels. They want the next Travis Baldree. They want the next Sarah J. Maas. They want someone to write a book similar to RF Kuang's recent success Babel. And I don't have it.

And my desire to write what I want overrides my desire to get published.

4) Frankly. I Can't Stand The Silence Anymore. At least when I was subbing short stories, I would occasionally get feedback on how I might improve my work—or sometimes equally encouraging—would be a note of praise at the end of a rejection. To date, I've not received a single personalized rejection, suggesting helpful changes. I get they're overworked and stressed, but guess what? So TF is everyone right now, including me. And this chamber of silence, this total lack of dialogue between agents and querying authors, annoys TF out of me. How can you expect any of us to make our stories better, or write better stories that you could in turn sell to publishers, if you won't give us feedback?

Quick tangent. The person I hold most responsible for making me a writer, after my beloved 4th & 5th grade teacher, Ms. Hale, is my AP High School English Teacher. Now, I don't cite them as an inspiration for positive reasons; I cite them because I could not stand them. This was a teacher who would mercilessly critique and tear apart my work without giving me any feedback as to how I could improve. It was almost as if I were expected to just...figure it out or read their goddamn mind. Dealing with this teacher absolutely sapped my motivation in the class because, after a point, I just gave up and assumed I was never going to be able to please them. And I barely scraped by in the class as a result. It's literally the worst grade I ever got in high school in a subject that, up until that point, I'd always done extremely well in.

Feedback, as hard as it can be to take at times, is essential to improving, and frankly if agents aren't willing to provide even just a touch of it, then they shouldn't be the only ones we authors should be sending our work to. But traditional publishing being the omnishambles it is doesn't like that.

Okay, tirade over. While I still feel like an exposed nerve after venting all that frustration, I think I've made my point clear enough. Perhaps the winds will change direction and begin blowing behind my sails at a later date. Until then, I'm folding my hand and getting up from the table while I still have my sanity. 

As of this writing, I have 32 active queries out there. Once those inevitable rejections come through, I'm waving my white flag of surrender. In the meantime, I'll get back to what really makes me happy: writing my stories.

— IMC 🙃