So far, I’ve received 4 requests for partials or fulls of my manuscript and about 5 rejections. Not bad! Excited to hear feedback from the agents who have requested it, and hopeful that a few more will trickle in. This week it’s been 6 weeks since I first sent my batch of queries out, so I’m hoping to hear from a few more in the next few weeks – the query process is long and slow.
With my last book, I had an agent wait 10 MONTHS to respond to a query – just a query, no samples included! I was so shocked to get that email, since I had basically just figured ‘no response means no’ – so she waited 10 months to send a rejection letter, which was so interesting to me. Not sure what happened there, but I know agents get hundreds of queries a day, and at least she gave me a reply! 🙂 I’d rather get a ‘no’ response than nothing anyways!
Meanwhile, I’m on vacation this week and just started the writing of my next book (my 5th book – I can’t believe I can say I’ve written that many so far, it just surprises me every time!) and am one chapter in, hurrah! I’m not going to say much about it, merely so that I can enjoy building up everyone’s suspense, but it is another fairy tale re-imagining and I’m already loving it. When you are able to experience the joy of storytelling, it’s like dipping your virtual pen into a deep well of ink – and I never grow tired of seeing what comes out on the page because of it!
By the way, if you are a person involved in any creative endeavors whatsoever – which, basically, every profession in the world is, in my opinion – you need to read ‘Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear’ by Elizabeth Gilbert. I just drank it up like a long, cool drink of inspirational water, and I can’t wait to buy it (I had gotten it from the library) and have my very own copy to read it through again.
I just felt like she was a preaching a sermon and I was someone in the congregration waving my hands like crazy, saying “YES! Amen, sister! Preach it!” Her beautiful writing and the practical way in which she talks about the creative process, and how it’s for all of us, just resonated with me unlike anything else I’ve ever read. Loved it.