As Far As You Can See

by | Sep 3, 2016 | Blog | 1 comment

“Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further.” – Thomas Carlyle

I’ve queried one hundred and five agents. From the results (forty-one rejections and sixty-three no responses with one request for pages still out), I’ve learned my book as currently written might be too narrowly focused to interest a mainstream publisher.

I knew from the outset this might be a possibility. Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two: The Memoirs of an Emotionally Unstable, Middle-Aged Marathoner is primarily about running. It’s also about mental illness, Natalie Goldberg, moving to Taos, meditation, writing, and let’s not forget the supporting characters, Morgan the yellow Labrador and Ed, my husband. But mostly, it’s about running. That topic might not interest enough readers for an agent to take a chance. But I had to try.

And now that I’ve gone this far, I’m going to revise and query more. Might it have been wiser to have made those changes before I began querying in the first place? Of course. But I didn’t know. I wrote the best book I could at the time. Now I will try to improve it and send it out again. Depending on the results of that second round, I will find the next step. I will also continue submitting to contests (the book was semi-finalist in one) and research small presses to see if that might be a better fit.

Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed by the amount of work. But all I need to do is the one thing in front of me. I do the next thing and then the thing after that. And when I’m done with those, I will have more information about what to do after that. More will be revealed, but only by working.

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