helenwritesit Being a writer means life is a series of highs and lows, ups and downs, with a constant undercurrent of hope and/or despair. Last week, everything happened at once. I was waiting to hear back from a Twitter pitch event where I’d been asked to submit the full manuscript. I was also waiting for a critique of my current work in progress. On Friday, I had another exciting Twitter pitch experience and I immediately submitted the manuscript. And then by Friday evening, I’d received two rejections from my most recent round of querying.
Then, the critique I’d been waiting for arrived, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for (which of course would be something along the lines of ‘This is publisher ready, why don’t we go for a working lunch and I’ll invite an editor friend who might be interested in this?’). I felt a little deflated, but at the same time I was sending off my manuscript to the Twitter pitch agent and was brimming with hope. I left the critique letter to percolate for a while. It wasn’t surprising feedback, and I knew some of it already if I’m totally honest, but the book has already been through a professional edit – when does the rewriting end?! Just when I thought I was safe from rejection, the original Twitter pitch submission I’d been waiting for came back as a no – and on a Sunday evening. Again, I was expecting it, but it’s always a bit depressing when you have to turn one of the rows of your querying spreadsheet red…
Onwards and upwards… I still have three agents who are yet to respond (and it’s only been a couple of weeks, so there’s still genuine hope!), the most recent Twitter pitch submission is out there and I have lots of genuinely useful feedback to work on before I head off to the querying trenches once more. But man, is the writing life an exhausting rollercoaster of emotions!
