I Think I'm Done Querying Agents.

 I really do. I really think I am done, y'all.

The publisher of my dreams has my full right now. But a request for a full doesn't mean a guaranteed acceptance; it isn't time yet for me to rest on my laurels, as the Big Book says. 

I despise uncertainty and feeling out of control; I've written about this. I am neurologically predisposed to despise these things. 

The process of what one must endure after one has written a book is very antithetical to inner peace for anyone, especially for someone of my wiring. 

The world can change so much in such a short amount of time. I put out an earlier version of the concept I'm writing now in 2014 and it was an absolute mess compared to the quality of what I have produced now. But within ten queries, I got an agent. And within two years, that agent successfully pitched me to Razorbill, HarperCollins Children, Delacourte, Viking. Yeah. These imprints wanted to read my book. And they did. 

They all rejected me but, damn. Damn! To have had a moment of their time...with the pittance that the original draft was...I'm still in shock, frankly.

Especially now that it's six years later and I've torn town and rebuilt the thing, maintaining the original concept, and it's so much better written and better in every way, but....

No one will touch it. I mean damn no one. I am over 50 rejections now. It is all so backwards. Why was what wasn't much of anything before so readily snapped up and given such an audience whereas now, no one will give me the time of day? 

I am a damn good writer. I know this because the editors that rejected me did so with commentary in which they praised my writing ability. I know I can tell a story. I know I am telling a story that is unique because one of them literally said it was nothing they had ever seen before. 

But yet... no one will touch it. 

I'm afraid that my content is simply at odds with the popular social and political rhetoric, although I certainly don't mean for it to be. But in a world in which woke politics are dominating everything...what I bring to the table isn't that. Never mind the fact that I am a person of marginalized identity or whatever which is something they blatantly seek...not merely books written about characters that are this, but no, they want writers specifically with this identity. This has been a point of contention as well, because... I don't want to sell myself. I just want to sell my stories.

So after today, I've decided... I'm not querying anymore agents. No. The agent-to-publisher thing isn't happening for me, which is devastating because, oh my gosh, six years ago... I was literally on the verge of something so big. Something which isn't in the cards for me now because...the world is different and once again, I don't fit in. That's my specialty, as it were....not fitting in.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that my dream publisher wants me. If not, then I just don't know. But in the words of Scarlett O'Hara: I won't think about that now. I'll think about that tomorrow.