Querying

I remember nearly seven years ago, I had this idea for a book that I knew if written well enough could get published.  Being the A personality that I am, taking control of the situation, I immediately went into research mode to discover how it was that one went from an idea to a published book.  It all seemed very reasonable: Step 1 - Write a book, but learned that’s actually called a manuscript; Step 2 - Get an agent. Yep! Knew this one was somewhere in there. Step 3 - Get it published by a publisher.  Oh, but wait.  There’s also: Step 1a - Write rough draft; Step 1b - Rewrite rough into first draft; Step 1c - Edit first draft into second draft; Step 1d - Cry and ask yourself, “Why did I start this to begin with?”; Step 1e - Reread and edit second draft; and so on. And the step that we are at now; Step 2d (or there abouts) - Rewrite query after several rejections realizing how “not good” your initial query is written. And hence my drawing posted on June 23rd of a snail.

We’ve been rewriting our query since April, a process I was sure would have been done by the end of April, mid-May tops.  Now, I’m just hopeful that we’re done by my birthday on June 30th that would be a grand birthday present.  We actually finished our query letter synopsis a week ago, the entire rewrite taking about a month and a half.  Currently, we are in the midst of writing our 1 to 2 page synopsis, which we didn’t know we needed until three of the agents we wanted to query were asking for one.  And it wasn’t until we started the process of writing the 1 to 2 page synopsis that we figured out how off base our query letter was and how we did not hit the mark.  Given that all the changes are to our benefit and appreciating the serendipity of life, we’ve been able to manage our emotions and frustrations to keep moving forward.  And overall this has been a very rewarding and growth inducing experience.

So what’s the upside other than having a really fantastically molded written piece?  I’ve learned that flexibility is a key to success.  Not the type of flexibility that makes you fall for anything, but the kind that makes you up for anything. The type that allows you to make better decisions for yourself and your projects.  Patience has never been a strong virtue of mine, I don’t like people wasting my time and I thrive on efficiency.  However, writing takes time and writing well takes even more time.  So, it’s certainly not a waste, but sometimes takes much longer than I’m used to. I’ve had to learn to wait and wait patiently, to be forgiving of the time it takes to do something right and learn that sometimes that the time itself is the efficiency.  

It’s been an experience condensing a 91,000 word manuscript into a couple of pages or even more so into a few paragraphs.  We’ve worked diligently to find the balance between giving the information needed to understand our story, but not enough to confuse it.  And we are nearly done, we are honestly only two or three paragraphs aways from completion.  Then we have those three agents at the ready to query - Step 2e - Query again. I’m excited for the next phase. I use my faith-filled enthusiasm (others may call it delusion) to keeps my hustle going. We will not wane from reaching our end goal. 
 
Step 3z - Laugh with sister about our molasses late night work sessions getting our query rewrite and synopsis finished.