Query, Query, Quite Contrary: Schrödinger’s Novel

I’ve been sparse on the blog because I’ve spent the last six weeks or so gearing up for querying this novel. I have very little to offer in the way of wisdom about this process, yet, but I wanted to capture a few honest thoughts from someone in the trenches, as they say—and yes, it does feel a bit underground, soggy, and beleaguered already.

This is not my first novel, but it is the first book I’m sending out in hopes of finding an agent to represent and sell it. I don’t yet know how that will go, but I’m excited to find out.

Excitement is not a word I’d heard often in connection to querying, though; people more often discuss ‘query hell’ and the agony of waiting and waiting for rejection after rejection for something they’ve spent so much time and energy on. Add to that the fact that querying requires a totally new (and probably unknown, if you're like me) skill set in terms of your ability to accurately and effectively summarize and pitch your new book with some degree of marketing savvy, as well as the host of written and unwritten rules the industry demands writers understand, and it makes sense that this part of the process can feel overwhelming.

I wanted to share one small glimpse into the process so that you can empathize with writers you know who are querying, first, but also so that if you are the writer querying, you might not feel so alone.

A big part of this part of the process is mental.

Here’s how my first 48 hours of querying went:

I’d spent weeks researching agents and preparing materials. I’d finally finished a last proofread of my manuscript (and yes, I immediately found other errors after sending it off the first time, because that’s how this works), and I hit the ground running.

I sent a handful of queries out to a carefully selected subset of agents on my list. I followed their rules, worked to acknowledge their wishlists and preferences, talked about how I’d come to know of them and their work (but in one or two-sentence increments as instructed…), and felt pretty good about myself.

And then, less than 36 hours later, my first rejection rolled in. By the end of 48 hours, I'd netted three!

This, I knew, was not only likely to happen, but was almost guaranteed. Even the very best book imaginable would have rejections, because an agent’s too busy for another client, because they aren’t looking for your genre, because—who knows, really. Any number of reasons. Agents are people—wonderful people who love books are are as eager to find wonderful new authors they get excited about as you are to find them. They have capacities and limits and visions and dreams and goals just like writers do, and it is impossible that one manuscript could align with everyone’s priorities.

I was prepared for this, intellectually; emotionally, though, that first rejection, even from an agent I was already fairly certain wouldn’t take me on, hit like a mack truck.

Why?

How can something be so reasonable and so difficult at the same time?

The truth is that rejection hurts. It takes courage to create something and send it into the world—and no matter how much you comprehend the why of having that thing rejected, the feeling is one of profound disappointment.

It’s also true that until that moment when the first rejection rolls in, your book is sort of a Schrödinger’s novel. Perhaps it’s dead on arrival; perhaps it’s a Pulitzer winner. No one can say, because no one has let the proverbial cat out of the proverbial bag. In that moment, your novel is perfectly unfettered possibility, not at all dimmed by reality.

I wish I had savored that beautiful moment for what it was—I didn’t take time to celebrate the achievement of simply finishing the book and sending it out into the world. I should have. I should have poured some bubbly or something.

No matter what happens in the moments after that, the accomplishment is worth the celebration, and so is the hope.

But, as a good friend pointed out to me when I was laughing at the speed with which the possibly alive cat became a very dead cat, at least in terms of one agent’s future with it—the failure is worth celebrating, too. Because while the untouched, unseen book might be a bestseller, it is also true that it never will be until you open the box.

So, dear reader, if this is you, if you have gotten a rejection (be it your first or fiftieth), I am pausing to lift my glass in a toast to you. You are brave for sharing this piece of you with the world. You are courageous for facing almost certain rejection. You are strong for standing up in the face of it (even if you have a cry or a mild existential crisis). You are no less a writer because of that rejection, and your work is still important and it is still full of potential. As long as you don't give up on the work, anything can happen.

If that is you, right now, pause this and celebrate yourself. Celebrate your grit and determination, celebrate your hard work, your persistence, and, if nothing else, celebrate your hope. You are doing something difficult. The only sure way to fail is to never try, to leave the box unopened, the query unsent, the draft unfinished, the book unwritten.

And, as another of my dear friends says, every no is one step closer to a yes.

Don't Be Precious

In undergrad, I studied acting. I’m pretty sure my study of and work in theatre has had a profound impact on my writing, and we can unpack that later. I mention it now because my acting teacher/college advisor/mentor/friend Richard Warner would say, all the time,

“Don’t be precious.”

It means, in essence, not to treat your art (or yourself, as the artist) with too much reverence. Don’t lose perspective on your art. Don’t forget the joy and play of it—don’t take yourself so stinkin’ seriously.

It is, of course, contradictory; we can’t be casual and ungentle with our work, or the work won’t ever be our best work. On the other hand, if we aren’t a little careless with it, a little reckless, a little wild and unpredictable, the work will never come to life.

An artist who can’t be a little reckless with their work never sees it finished. They never query that novel, or submit that short story, or enjoy a reader’s response to their words, because they never feel like the work is quite ready to leave the nest.

An artist who is too precious with their words takes themselves too seriously. They lose the fun of telling stories, of this particular story, of connecting with readers. They lose the spark of originality that could make their work sing.

There’s another part of being precious that means we’re too close to our work to gain any objectivity. This must be why writers are cautioned to put their drafts “in a drawer” and “get some space.” You have to be able to see your work without seeing your investment in the work.

All my words are getting in the way of my meaning. So let’s try this.

When I think of a non-literary artist who knows how not to be precious, I think immediately of Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is a master of ephemeral art. He creates sculptures and paintings in nature, made from nature, that are meant to decay with time. He finds beauty, captures it, and then lets it go.

His work is stunning. Do a google image search. You’ve probably seen it before.

What’s really amazing is that all of the limits on his art (time, materials, place, etc.) force him to have a loose, light touch on the things he creates—and that loose, light touch, those limits, they in turn are what make his art truly remarkable. He doesn’t force them, doesn’t keep too tight a grip on them.

We could do a whole study on art by reading Andy Goldsworthy quotes, but here are a few I leave you to consider in reference to this idea of being too precious: “My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds—what is important to me is the experience of making.”

“When I was at art school, a lot of art education is about art being a means of self-expression…I wanted to shift the emphasis or the intention of my art from something I disgorged myself upon and something that actually fed me or made me see the world or understand the world.”

“One of the most important aspects of my work is the element of discovery—both for myself and for viewers.”

“Mistakes are proof that you’re trying.”

“Sometimes you need to stop doing something to really see it afresh.”

“Art is not a career—it’s a life.”

“All work, good and bad, is documented. Each work grows, strays, decays—integral parts of a cycle…”

To spend much more time here, I think, would be a bit precious, actually. You can reflect on these ideas the same way I will, and let them inform your work. Or not! The choice is ultimately yours.

I’m going to work on holding on a little more loosely, on being a bit lighter in how I approach my work, in giving myself space to be imperfect, to let the imperfections and raw beauty of my own materials (my mind, my vocabulary, my experiences, my way of seeing the world) shine through the cracks in what I write.

This work of mine—it’s not precious. But the chance to create it, to give life to something in my head and share it with the world—that certainly is.

The Problem with "Trust Your Reader"

There’s a common adage in writing you probably have heard: trust your reader. We are to assume our reader can and will find the pieces we’ve created and puzzle out our meanings.

This isn’t just a refrain you see in craft books and reddit threads, either. It was often used in my MFA classes, too. Sometimes, it was a veiled critique, like, “I really like how you trust your reader here, but this needs a bit more explanation…” Other times, it came out as an exhortation: “I think you can cut some of this exposition and trust your reader to figure it out.”

I dutifully noted the advice when it came my way and occasionally offered it myself or used it in a lit class, where we’d praise an author for trusting their brilliant readers (in this case, us). It wasn’t until I’d been out of my MFA program a year that I realized how backward the advice is.

I was knee-deep in editing my first draft of my book. I knew enough to know it needed work. Among many other questions, I wondered about trusting my reader. Was I doing it? Should I be? Did I even know what that would look like?

Concurrently, I found myself chewing on an unrelated comment from one of my professors (the illustrious Courtney Brkic). She’d given the feedback based on a very early draft of a chapter in my thesis that no longer existed. Watch out, she noted, for repetition. Not of words, or even phrases or facts—but places where I was tempted to restate something I’d already said. The danger was that by offering two versions of a thing, one of them invariably works better, seems stronger, is more effective—and that makes the other one less good, weaker.

This is good advice, and I’ll eventually get around to unpacking what it means, because there's a very valuable, practical craft lesson in there (particularly if you write, like I do, largely by rhythm).

In my gut, I felt these two ideas were somehow connected, though I couldn't tell you why, and so they both churned in my mind as I worked, pressing onward, assuming I’d build my wings on the way down. This strategy, by the way—learning while doing—seems to be the only way I’ve ever learned anything about writing. Clarity comes through work, the way neurons link ideas to action often feeling like serendipity instead of science.

Over months of rewriting, I came to see this tendency Courtney noted for myself. I saw descriptions of something being “X and Y” where those two things were really both attempts at saying “Z,” which I also often wrote. I noticed places where in the space of a phrase, or a sentence, or a paragraph, or a chapter, I’d try twice at weaving the same emotion through a character’s dialogue or the same mood through a description. Or I’d find myself hitting an idea too on-the-nose the first time, then with greater nuance the second. I even found whole scenes that seemed to be striking the same chord without adding anything new.

It's possible I started applying the advice more broadly than I was meant to. But as I forced myself to make choices, the book got stronger. And, interestingly, I found myself saying, without even thinking, “That’s clear enough. The reader will get it.”

Trust the reader, I said to myself, in moments of doubt—trust the reader. They’ll be able to do this, even if you don't think so.

And that’s when the lightbulb went off.

It’s not the reader I need to learn to trust at all. It’s myself.

I need to learn that my subtlety is enough. I need to learn that my way of telling the story is effective. I need to trust that I’m a good enough writer to say all the things I want to say in the way I want to say them, and that my ideas will be carried by my words in a way that can reach and become real to a reader I may never know. I need to trust that my first way of saying something works so I won’t feel the need to say it again. I need to believe in my ability to be delicate and deft and also, miraculously, understood.

I need to trust myself.

This is a profoundly different statement, in the end, than being told to trust your reader, and yet it often leads to the same end result. The writing improves, the reader is given the chance to work at interpretation in the way they really, desperately want to (more on this later), and both the storytelling and the relationships we create on and across the page grow richer. What this version of trust accomplishes along the way, though, is really quite different than belief in your unknown readers. Trusting ourselves goes far beyond the work or project in question and becomes a craft lesson for the whole of our creative lives. It’s a lesson that has the power to reshape our approach to our writing in a much more intrinsic way, recasting our relationship with our readers as a partnership of good faith in both directions.

Next time you think of how a book or an author trusted you, think of how that little bit of faith wasn’t an isolated incident, but rather an extension of the author’s practice of faith in themselves. And more importantly, the next time you are making a choice in your work, choose trusting yourself. Do the weirder thing, the one you’re not sure will work, the more subtle one, the one that requires a leap of faith from the person on the other side of the page. Your readers will thank you for it, certainly, but so will the you who is writing tomorrow, or ten years from now, or twenty.

Little by little, you can cultivate deeper confidence in your own words--maybe even in yourself.

And if you don’t feel that confidence right away (because, if you’re like me, you won’t)?

Here’s another free craft lesson for you:

Fake it ‘til you make it. Act like you’re trusting yourself, even if you have to bring the senss of self-doubt with you for the ride, and you may find the feelings just follow along someday.