Query Quest
Day 36 of the querying journey. I have submitted to fifteen agents and have received one rejection. To quote the English translation of “Hoppipolla”: And I get a nosebleed, but I always stand up.
After over a month of querying, I am learning the true value of patience, hope, and what it means to react to the inevitability of rejection with as much grace as I can. My friends Kelly, Kateland, and Vicki are great sources of comfort and help, and I could not get through the grueling wait without them. I think in times like this, you take comfort in the well of creativity and love in which you are floating.
Let’s talk a little about hope. As much as I tamper myself down, like a weed borne of concrete, that seedling of hope keeps popping up and basking in the wary sunlight. I respect what these agents are doing, am grateful for the time they are putting into my submission, and I am also chewing my bottom lip, drinking lots of tea, and am so unbelievably hopeful. In Spanish, “to wait” and “to hope” are single concepts bound to the same root word. This marriage of patience and expectation is one that gets stronger with each day, with each time I stir in brown sugar into my tea, with each time I pretend to be a monster and chase Fable and Bijou around the apartment, with each time I open and close a book, my sense of focus whimpering out. Hope refuses to be recycled into some baser emotion. It refuses to buckle.
In the meantime, I’ve been struggling to dive into Project Novocaine. My attention is meager. I’ve sort of switched gears to look closer at my poetry collection and a new project that I am calling Project Platelet, which I will formally introduce in a different blog. I’m rewatching Arcane for the umpteenth time (Who else is heartbroken that it will end with season two?) because it inspires me to try and tell a story that good, that compelling, that tight, and that breathtaking.
What is it that I want people to take away from my novel? I think I want it to plunge people into deep, slow emotions, but I also want it to be a beautiful, eerie, unspooling journey. I have a notebook that I am keeping full of ideas and worldbuilding notes, and in it, I wrote that I dreamed of crafting an avant-garde, dark fantasy with hints of steampunk, dieselpunk, philosophical passages, Americana, and Latin American magical realism. It is the river in which I shed my blood and watched it scamper away downstream.
I think that there are conflicting emotions throughout this process. I’ve been up and down about my opinion on the book, but that immortal hope has crept in. I have some belief in the story, have for so long felt that this is the narrative that I want to weave. Every now and then, crashing defeat bombards my sinewy spirit, but today I am alright, counting the days in my planner. Thirty-six. It’s a good, round number, forest green and spunky black, and tasting of carpet. I’ll keep moving forward.
Today I have copy edits for my client’s book, a review of Arabic greetings, and some drafting on Project Platelet. I’m working on a beat sheet for my screenplay/poetry collection, and I have some books to finish reading. The day goes on, and I go on with it.
