Query Fear

I wrote in my last post (This Isn’t the End) that I’m giving up contests so that I can focus on querying. It’s a good call—I still believe that—but I’m hesitant to start sending out queries. It’s not that I don’t think my MS is ready. One of my CPs says over and over how excited she is for me to query because she thinks my MS is in a great place and she loves it. It’s not that I don’t know how to query. I’ve done that before with a different MS. It’s also not that I fear rejections. Again, I’ve queried before and I know how this works. So what’s the problem?

I’m scared to query.

I love my MS, my CP loves my MS, and it’s ready to be queried. The problem is I don’t know if agents will love my MS. It didn’t do well in contests, though I know those things are so subjective that they’re not representative of the way agents will react. Or is that not true? Agents are subjective, too. I’ve gotten rejections where the agent basically said my (other) MS wasn’t right for them. That doesn’t mean my MS was bad; it means they didn’t love it enough to represent it. Agents spend so much time with your MS that they have to be passionate about it. You have to find the right agent at the right time. So is there an agent out there who will be passionate about my MS like my CP is? I don’t know.

There’s only one way to find out, of course, and that’s querying. Still, I’m hesitant.

I’m also analytical and think far ahead—maybe too far ahead for my own good (though not far enough to be good at strategic games like chess). What if agents don’t like my MS? What then? There’s always the option to query again, but a lot of blog posts and online articles I’ve read state that this is an iffy option. Some agents don’t like to be queried an MS they’ve already rejected even if it’s been over a year and you’ve made significant changes. Not to mention that if they didn’t like it the first time but are amenable to querying again, what’s going to change their minds about it the second time?

If rejections happen—and yes, I know they will—and if I reach the point where no agents offer representation and if I decide against querying again, what’s my next option? Well, there’s the MS I queried this past fall. It needs a lot of revisions, including in the query and a new beginning (see my post Let’s NOT Start at the Very Beginning for more on that). I don’t know, once I’ve made changes, that agents would even recognize it from the first time around. So there’s that…except that I’d be querying again.

My other option? I start over. I write another MS. I have a file folder full of more story ideas, a few of which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I pick one and write it. I send it to my CPs and make revisions, I write a query and ask others to help me make it better, and then I query that MS. This option would take me at least a year, probably more. *headdesk* We writers use this phrase a lot on Twitter. It’s for embarrassment, for those hopeless days, for the feeling in your gut that you have to keep going no matter how much you don’t want to at that moment. Writing and prepping another MS is a ton of work and there’s no guarantee that it’d be worth it.

But I’ll say what I’ve said many times before—I want to be published. I’ll do what it takes. I’ll quash my query fear, I’ll query this MS, and I’ll see what happens. Then I’ll decide what comes next.