Novel writing has humbled me.
It is one thing to have written a novel and watch it not get published and something else to watch four novels go unpublished.It is four times as bad (give me a calculator and I will prove it.) Despair? I'll have none of it.
After this writer finished a second novel and got the usual "I am too busy to read your email much less your synopsis and I am too important to respond to you, you pathetic loser" treatment from publishers and agents, he decided to start a blog. It was designed to explore conventional and guerilla tactics for getting one's novel published. It had been entertaining at times, but it has also been a flop.
Self-promotion has never been my forte. If I could successfully Barnum myself, I would be eating lunch with Teal Swan and Tai Lopez. Given my time constraints, I had to repeatedly choose if I was going to continue to write or if I was going to play the rejection game all over again. Each time, I chose to write.
I entertained the idea of getting rich after my first novel but there was a realistic streak as well. If I could just make enough money so that I could work limited hours as I wrote the second novel and then as a few dollars more would roll in after the second novel was completed...The plan failed.
Things happen. Novel #4 was going to take a few months to complete. It took 2.5 years. My bad health played a big part in that miscalculation. There were other factors that I will touch upon at a later time. Still, I completed #4 and I am proud of it. Will there be a #5? Only if I can get published. A lab rat will only press a lever so many times if cheese does not drop down the chute.
A web search followed the completion of #4. I found an article that profiled new agents seeking new writers. I chose Maximillan Ximenez and sent him an email introduction. I attached a query letter and three sample chapters.
True to his profession's code of ethics, Mr. Ximenez did not respond. Given the ease of implementing an autoreply that says something like, "Get lost, wannabe," it says something about this agent's commitment to his craft that he did not provide a response. I cannot access the state of other professions, but I can tell you that today's literary agents are as haughty as they have ever been.
After two weeks of silence, I found a second lit ag to submit my work. The lucky lady was Gail Fortune. I followed her submission guidelines to the detail and was greeted with two weeks of silence. Glad to see that Mr. Ximenez was not the only member of his profession to maintain high standards of arrogance. It can take as long as a minute to compose an autoreply. Ms. Fortune cannot be bothered.
After completing my first novel in 2007, I sent snail mail to dozens of publishers. Even with self-addressed stamped envelopes included, few of them actually bothered to say "Go away." I then contacted dozens of agents with similar results.
After completing my second novel in 2010, I joined an agent-contact service for a small monthly fee. Advised to submit sequentially, I soon piled up rejections. I doubt if even one agent or subordinate read my submissions but I did collect a handful of polite rejections. It was then that I started this blog.
In 2016, I completed #3, "The Fluffy Manifesto." More of the same. Now it is 2020 and here I am, hawking a fourth title. I am once more trying to find one agent who will actually read my work and respond to my introduction. Maybe that's too grandiose. Who has time to read? OK, I will settle for a response of any kind, polite or nasty.
Wish me well in my pursuits.
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