Doldrums

I'm feeling kind of at sea. Not a rough sea, but one becalmed--the doldrums.

I'm nine weeks into the query process. Two-thirds of my queries have received responses in the vein of, "Not the right fit for me." I get that. I certainly want an agent who's excited about my book. And while I haven't felt sad per se about any of the rejections, I am feeling a bit blah.

A factor I hadn't considered, being new to the process, was that many agents take 2-4 weeks off during the summer, which slows response times down considerably.

I have one query that's been sitting idle for 55 days. When I look on Query Tracker this agent has replied to very little submitted to her in the past 90 days. In all fairness, judging by the number of queries that QT lists--and I suspect that a great deal more come through that don't get logged on QT--she must be swamped.

For three weeks I stopped submitting any queries.

But my husband has a saying: Action conquers fear.
I figure action also conquers the blahs. Time for me to be proactive and put some wind in my sails, so to speak. In the past 3 days, I've researched agents and sent off six new queries. It feels good!

Now to get myself out of my story funk 😉

Crossed a Threshold

Whew! In early April I crossed the 80k word threshold and I'm feeling pretty good about my book.

I just finished reading it to my husband. (I love reading aloud.) I started reading it during Snowmegedon, but then I got to a part that I knew I still needed to fill in and we had to put the reading on hold. But I finished bridging the plot hole chasm and in a three day readathon, I finished reading the story to my beloved.

While Phil reads a lot, 98% of it is non-fiction. Lots of science, business, and psychology stuff. But, he was engrossed by my story. I even made him cry at the end! That is quite the compliment.

Now my critique group is telling me to stop bringing re-worked bits to group and start querying.

I'm terrified.

But, Heather has set me a deadline. I'm to bring my query and a list of agents to start with by the end of May.

*glup*

Now I'm off to read everything I can on crafting a query letter.