New Goodbyes

The new year is almost upon us and I am about to face my biggest challenge yet:

The Last Query.

Over the past year, I slowly sent out queries to agents I researched and followed on Twitter and held my breath waiting for replies. This, surprisingly, has meant that I have not sent out that many over time. I parsed them between various revisions, making sure I had my ducks in a row.

I’ve panic-queried. I’ve #PitMad queried. I’ve queried before I’d fully finished a revision and ended up writing over 10,000 words in one day. I’ve rewritten my whole novel for a single agent. All in all, I’ve done what every other writer who is chasing that beautiful obsession that is traditional publishing has done. Only, I realized over conversations with other writers and reading others’ success stories, that I’ve only done half the work.

Now that my R&R and exclusivity period is over, I am looking out against the big, wide world again. And I’m doing things a bit differently in the new year.

Because if I don’t get representation after this final push, I am going to let go of Whale Bones.

So many people don’t understand the process it takes for a writer to let go of a project they have poured their heart and soul into. I started writing about a girl with dragon feet and fairy wings when I was 13 years old, but I couldn’t find her story. I put her in a world where women were breeders and slaves, dragged her through a tale where she was stolen by a dragon and forced to eat him to become powerful enough to battle a world-destroyer. I’ve held her in my heart through the darkest reaches of my life, putting her in dungeons, having her talk to celestial spirits, and changing her as I changed. I’ve given her one name, then another, and another.

Finally, when I thought I was writing a new story at last, she appeared, fragile and newly-formed. She was destined to be married, taken heart and soul by a stranger or a thief. She was tossed and turned as I tried to push a story on her and make her do what I wanted. But, in the end, she found her own path. She created and devised, starting as a too-old child in a growing woman’s body and facing all the awakenings of spirit and darkness I’d discovered on my own years before, headfirst.

I found that all she wanted was to find her own path to redemption and be loved in quiet ways.

I grew up alongside this girl and poured my ever-changing heart into her. I’ve been mother and sister and friend to her. Because of this, and the respect I have for the project I have placed her in, I refuse to give her anything but the best. She deserves someone to fight for her that isn’t just me. She deserves a book cover made of fire and bone and dark nights. She deserves to be held in libraries for as long as they can keep her. Independent publishing won’t get her where I want. Self-publishing won’t put her in the hands of the lost and the wandering.

If I have to let her fade away for a time and focus on other things, it is only because I am secreting her from the rest of the world and letting her live alongside me for a little while longer.

In this final push, I have spent the month preparing. I stopped holding back. Almost everyone in my D&D group read a copy and they’ve sat and talked with me for hours about how the world is built and where missing pieces need to fit. I sent it to a stranger and saw how another set of fresh eyes engaged with it. I shared it with my family and their waves of kindness broke my despair over the chances I’d lost.

I’ve found mentors. Writers who will sit with me and keep me focused. The list of people I have to thank for their help has grown incredibly long.

It is a wonderful and brilliant thing, knowing an entire community is behind you as you fight for your dreams.

It will be done. By June, I will know the fate of this one novel. In the meantime, prepare yourself: there is only more to come.

Months Querying: 15

Total Drafts: 16

Failed Rewrites: 8

Successful Rewrites: 8

Beta Reading Rounds: 6

Fastest Rewrite: 9 Weeks

Queries Sent: 24

No Responses: 8

Partial/Full Requests: 4

Form Rejections: 7

Personalized Rejections: 6

Queries to Send: 25