Hi.
I’m Raghav. I’m one of the three writers who make up the Office of Modern Composition. That’s me in the middle there.
Earlier this year, after seven months of querying, I secured literary representation.
I found the querying process came down to two things:
1) creating a sustainable system that can handle volume.
2) internal, emotional infrastructure.
This series is divided into five parts (including this one), each of which will be posted on a Monday. In coming weeks, I’ll discuss the internal infrastructure, querying as sales, the query letter, and prospect identification. I’ll also provide a resource list. Keep coming back to read the entire series! For now, here’s part one.
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Querying agents is an arduous, dispiriting process.
I learned about myself, about why I write, and about emotional resilience. The process was about external validation but the majority of the time I spent laboring alone and my gaze was turned inward, often sharply and unkindly.
I was delighted, relieved and overjoyed to secure representation from the wonderful and incomparable Priya Doraswamy of Lotus Lane. Still, the pain of repeated rejection, and worse, silence, remains fresh. I signed in October and there’s still a long road ahead until publication but, at the request of several Office of Modern Composition Virtual Co-Write Members, I thought I’d write about my querying process with the caveat that all such odysseys are likely to be different.
I queried 72 agents before I found the right one. But when I found her, it clicked into place like Cinderella’s shoe. I had requests for partials and fulls and walks down the aisle and reversals of fortune and all those things may be in your future, too. Read on so you don’t make the same mistakes I did.
What I WON’T be covering: Is your Manuscript Query-Ready?
I won’t be covering this because it doesn’t map onto my querying experience. In fact, it’s one thing that, according to all online literature, I did WRONG. For example, almost everyone says that you shouldn’t revise while querying. There’s a good reason for this. You need to feel like the project is closed. I made the mistake of opening it up a few times and tinkering, perhaps excessively, perhaps detrimentally; or perhaps, it helped. All I know is that everyone said not to do it. But I did it. And I felt guilty doing it.
You need to determine if your manuscript is query-ready. You need to decide if you’re going to simultaneously revise and query. It’s what I did but it’s also what everyone says not to do. So, well, your call.
