During late October and November 2022, I sent out 17 queries. By the time most agencies, agents, and editors were closed down for the Holidays (around Thanksgiving to mid-December), I had 10 rejections filed away. From what I’ve learned from social media sites, receiving a rash of rejections is a good time (especially if you’ve gotten some agent feedback) to hit the ‘pause’ button and take another look at what you’re sending out. During the rejection flow, I noticed one agency I queried was putting on a workshop about revising your opening pages to meet what agents are looking for.
Fortunately, I got a spot in the ‘bootcamp’ and this gave me a long weekend to tear apart my opening 10 pages. Now, it’s nearly the end of the month, and I’ve finally got the pages I feel comfortable running by my writing group. Hopefully, with their feedback and the last comments from the agent who evaluated my first-pass at revision, I’ll have a buffed-up version to send out in early January. In the meantime, it gave me a good reason to look again at all those additional answers required in online form submissions. Short bio. Comparable books. Reader demographics. One sentence pitch. One paragraph pitch. Synopsis. Query letter. Etc. I’ve got my fingers crossed that a new opening and additional revisions for these must-haves could make the difference.
Fast-forward a couple of weeks, just as I’m posting this—guess what? That ‘final’ ten-page opening I ran by my writing group? Well, I cleaned it up and sent out four more queries with it. Lo-and-behold, I got a ‘revise and resubmit’ response from an agent who wrote: “With me, no means not yet…” I was so excited about her impression that TANGLED DARKNESS “has a terrific premise,” that this rejection felt like a small victory. It was enough to get me back at the first ten pages again, re-ordering the sequence of events. Now, five days later, I’m charged up to send more queries. I also found a three-day workshop at The Manuscript Academy next week on submission strategy. The group, run by an author and an agent, organized classes to go through rejections, queries, first pages, submission list, personalization and overall strategy. I can’t wait!
