5 Tips for Staying Positive While Querying
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I think it's long overdue that we talk about querying anxiety and how to stay positive while querying.
This process can be extremely disheartening and disappointing. I'm really passionate about helping authors through the querying trenches because it is a really sucky but necessary part of the traditional publishing journey.
Far too often, I see authors give up on querying prematurely because the experience really got them down, which I completely understand — but, at the same time, it really makes me sad because I can't help but feel that if they had stuck with it, then perhaps they could have gotten that dream publishing deal that they wanted.
I've been seeing so much discussion about the current state of querying online, so I want to share some tips on staying positive while querying. Even though I do believe that querying is an important part of your publishing journey, it is not worth sacrificing your well-being. So, I want to help you make sure you are taking care of yourself during this time and that you implement some strategies to help you mitigate some of the disappointment that goes with querying.
I believe it is possible to maintain your mental health during this challenging process, and I want to give you some tips on how to do it. Here’s how to maintain your sanity and stay positive while you are querying.
1. Adjust Your Expectations
The first and most important step for staying positive while querying is to reset your expectations. So much of the disappointment, sadness, discouragement, and anxiety that is wrapped up in querying comes down to having unrealistic expectations about how the process is going to look for you — and frankly, that is not your fault at all! The traditional publishing industry is a very strange, opaque place, and it's an incredibly weird and confusing thing to navigate. Many components of the traditional publishing industry don't make sense, and I want to help you reset your expectations so that you can navigate it confidently.
I see authors primarily getting frustrated with the length of time it takes to hear back from literary agents when you are querying. It is true that in any other industry, it would be completely mind-boggling to ask someone to wait several months for a response — not to mention the fact that you might not get a response at all. Some agencies say that if you don't hear about back from them, you are supposed to take it as a rejection. Unfortunately, this is an industry standard.
I have writers email me all the time asking if they should give up querying because it's been three or four weeks and they have heard nothing from literary agents. The truth is, in these situations, my advice is always the same: you just have to keep waiting and see how it plays out.
This is potentially the toughest time to be querying in the history of the traditional publishing industry. Because agents are especially overloaded with queries, they may take even longer than typical to get back to you.
The bottom line is if you reset your expectations and know from the get-go that it's going to be a very long waiting game, possibly taking up to a year or more, you are going to be able to better manage your mental health and ultimately not feel so disappointed when you don't get responses.
2. Set Up a Separate Email Address
My next tip for staying positive while querying is a tactical one. I recommend setting up a separate email address specifically for your queries. It could be yournameauthor@gmail.com, for instance. You are going to use this separate email account for any and all queries that you send, including if you send them via form sites like QueryTracker.
Keeping your queries separate from your personal email account is going to eliminate some of that anticipation that you naturally have. Maybe you find yourself checking your email constantly, or perhaps you get a rejection in the middle of a busy work day and it completely ruins your mood. By having that separate email account, you can go in and review your queries only when you feel like you're in the right headspace to do so.
I would recommend checking this account no more than once a day — you don't want the lack of responses from literary agents (or, unfortunately, those necessary rejections) to completely throw you off when you get a notification while you're in the middle of something. This is going to do wonders for your mental health while you're querying.
Even if you want to check every other day or so, that is completely fine. If a literary agent does respond positively and requests a partial or full manuscript, they are not going to expect you to respond immediately. You should respond quickly, but they likely took several weeks to get back to you, so waiting a day to respond to them is not going to make a difference, I promise!
Set a time that works for you — maybe it's at the end of the day when you're winding down, and you pop in just to see if anything happened with your queries. Do whatever makes sense for you. Just make sure you enter that inbox in a good space mentally so that the rejections or the lack of responses don't get you down.
3. Don’t Get Too Attached to Specific Agents
My next tip for staying optimistic when querying is to not get attached to agents. Another huge source of upset related to the querying process is when your dream agent — maybe the agent that listed everything that matches your book in their manuscript wishlist — rejects you, and then you spiral into this sense of self-doubt, thinking, “Well, if that agent who was my perfect match rejected me, then no one is going to take me on, because there's no other agent who is going to match me like that one did.” This is really an unhealthy way of thinking, and it is going to make it extremely difficult for you to stay positive while querying.
Remember that there are myriad reasons why a literary agent rejected you, including potentially that they have a client whose project is just a bit too close to yours, or maybe they're actually focusing on a different genre at this time. These are things that you cannot know going into the querying process, but I want you to know that when they reject you, it is not personal. It also does not necessarily mean that your story is bad or that another agent won’t love it. So, do not get hung up on this specific dream agent and then give up entire early if they reject you.
While you should do everything in your power to match your book project with the agent's manuscript wishlist, don't allow yourself to get overly attached and therefore heartbroken. At the end of the day, this is a business decision for the agent, and sometimes business just doesn't work out the way that you want it to.
Keep an open mind regarding all of the agents that you reach out to — your dream agent at the end of the day might be someone who you didn't expect at first glance.
4. Ignore the Statistics
My next tip for staying positive while querying is to ignore statistics. If you are an analytical person, you might be inclined to track your own query statistics — for instance, measuring how many requests you got for the full or partial manuscript out of how many queries you sent and looking at that percentage. The platform QueryTracker actually provides some of its own statistics, such as the average response time for literary agents.
While in theory these types of statistics can be helpful and let you see where you're at with your querying, I think in more cases it actually leads to writers obsessing over those statistics. You might be wondering why an agent got back to someone later in the queue before you, or you might be wondering why it's taking longer than their average response time.
Remember that literary agents have their own way of managing their query inboxes; everyone does it differently. Some agents, for instance, do a quick pass through a bunch of queries and then set aside the ones that sounds interesting at first glance so they can circle back to them and take a closer look. It could be the case that your query is sitting in that folder, ready for a second-round review.
Ultimately, overanalyzing any statistics related to querying can just be unproductive and get you down. You might get in your head even more than you already are, so don't put too much stock in those numbers. Remember that no matter how many statistics that you track, all it takes is one agent saying yes — then all of those statistics will become moot anyway.
5. Connect with Other Querying Authors
My final tip for staying positive while querying is to connect with other querying authors. There is a robust community online of authors sharing their experiences throughout the querying journey. If you search the hashtags #amquerying or #writingcommunity on Twitter, you're going to see thousands of posts. Writers will often share how many rejections they've gotten or an especially disappointing rejection they experienced, which can give you a sense of camaraderie. It can be helpful to see that you're not alone and that others are going through the same thing.
Many writers will also share their success stories, sharing how many queries it took them when they announce that they signed with their literary agent. That can also be really encouraging to see, particularly if they have sent out a lot of queries and finally had the outcome they were looking for. It can help you set those realistic expectations and encourage you to keep going.
My one warning with looking at posts from the writing community online is to not get hung up if an author gets an offer of representation and had fewer queries than you currently have out. Remember, everyone's journey looks completely different. It is never going to be the same for every author, so if for you personally it isn't productive to see those kinds of posts, then just stay away from those hashtags altogether.
If at any point querying feels utterly overwhelming, it's getting you down, or it is affecting other parts of your life and taking a toll on your mental health, remember that you can always take a step back. There will always be agents accepting queries, so if you need to take a break for a month or two, or even a year, do it. You can always come back to querying at a later time. It is not worth you sacrificing those elements of your life to go through the querying process. Querying is ultimately not worth sacrificing your happiness!
I hope these tips helped you feel more optimistic about the querying journey and gave you some ideas on how to maintain your mental health throughout this challenging part of the publishing journey. I ultimately want you to clear your head and go into it feeling encouraged and resilient.
Thank you so much for reading and happy querying!