There’s no question that querying agents can be a very long and very lonely road. The journey is vulnerable, it’s scary, and, more often than not, it’s silent. These days receiving any specific feedback from an agent may feel like a luxury. While rejections—or no response at all—have always been part of the querying landscape, it is probably safe to say that response rates have declined in recent years as query loads have risen dramatically. Because the process can induce deep anxiety, the No. 1 thing you can do for yourself as you start querying is to work on a new project. It doesn’t even have to be writing! Treat querying as a job; as with any job, you need chances to take breaks, during which you can channel your creative energy into something else. Do not let the long road demoralize you.
But speaking of that road, how long is too long? Even most successful agent searches take tenacity—but at what point does tenacity become misplaced hope? How do you determine whether it’s time to revise, to incorporate any feedback, or to move on from the project entirely?
Of course there is no perfect equation or quantifiable answer. No ideal target number of agents or months or years spent querying. (I’m sure this is when many of you, desperate for a clear answer, may stop reading, but hear me out.) Truly, everyone’s circumstances vary: Some genres have more viable agents than others, some writers send queries out in batches or all at once, etcetera. That said, if you are reaching the point where you are starting to “square-peg-round-hole query” agents—for example, if you find yourself thinking, Maybe because this agent said they like coming-of-age realism, they will like my middle-grade fantasy novel because it has a young protagonist—it is probably time for a come-to-Jesus moment. This late-stage querying, often done in an act of understandable desperation, does a disservice to both you and your fellow writers. Authors querying agents in genres they don’t work in leads to overfull inboxes, which in turn makes it harder to provide specific feedback, which in turn leads to writers never hearing back, which in turn leads to writers growing desperate and querying the wrong agents. And the cycle perpetuates.
But agents do read your queries. Even if we have only a little time to look at each one, I lay my eyes on each query in my inbox. If there is something enticing about your project—a great hook, beautiful writing—chances are you will get a bit of specific feedback from at least one of the dozens of agents you are querying. If you have received nothing but full-form rejections or radio silence and exhausted your options, you might have your answer.
What if you have received that rare “gift” (be careful what you wish for) of actual feedback, even if the agent has passed? Because of its scarcity it might be tempting to take every bit of critique you are able to juice from an agent as gospel. In fact, this is why many agents are reticent to provide specific notes—we don’t always have time to spend more than a few pages with a manuscript, and we cannot guarantee that an instinct about what needs to be changed will be borne out by the rest of the book. We don’t want to set an author down the wrong road in editing their own work.
That said, if an agent has taken the time to give feedback, it is worthwhile to think carefully about it. I always believe that with the query process, it’s most helpful to figure out what your worst instinct is and fight against it. For example, before you can ask when to stop querying, you need to know when to start: I tell writers that if you tend to drag your feet, if you’re eight drafts in and changing commas here and there, it’s probably time to dive into the deep end. But if you seek the (perceived) immediate gratification of sending your project out into the world, you should probably take a deep breath, log out of QueryTracker, force yourself to slow down a bit, and maybe try for another draft or two. Similar advice follows when you are fielding potential feedback from agents. Be honest with yourself: Does your reaction to constructive criticism tend to be defensive? Do you immediately want to argue with the feedback? If that’s the case you may benefit from sitting with the discomfort a bit. Of course, it is easy and natural to feel protective of your work. Writing is inherently a vulnerable act and in its early stages is a very private thing. Yes, it’s true that some bad books are published every year and some beautiful books never see the light of day, and it’s true that the industry has plenty of gatekeepers and stacked odds, but that doesn’t mean the whole game is rigged.
On the other hand if you know that you are easily influenced or feel desperate to have your book published no matter what, it’s best to have an idea in your head—ideally before you start querying—of what is nonnegotiable and intrinsic to your project. If a specific piece of feedback just isn’t sitting well with you because the agent is suggesting something that feels entirely antithetical to your intention, don’t be pressured to make those changes. At the end of the day, what is the point of publishing a project that doesn’t feel like yours?
The specifics of the critique will, of course, influence your next steps. If you have gotten positive feedback about the prose or the voice, another line edit on the same project is probably not going to be what gets you an agent. If agents are praising your writing but say they can’t envision an audience for the project, the issue may have more to do with plot. Look back at your comps: What was it about those books that drew readers to them? On the flip side, if an agent says a story feels familiar, it’s possible the market is oversaturated with similar ideas. If you’ve gotten several requests for full manuscripts that did not ultimately materialize in an offer, that is still usually a sign that your prose itself is developed enough; a revision might be worthwhile if you have a sense of which direction to go in, or you can try to apply what worked well in this project to something new.
If the agent says something along the lines of “didn’t quite connect with the prose,” that could of course be a simple mismatch of style and voice—after all, not all writing works for everyone. However, if it seems like this feedback is cropping up more frequently, it might be a sign that it’s time to take a few steps back and work on developing your craft further before querying again. That can take a few different forms: If you have the financial means, you might sign up for workshops through a program such as GrubStreet or Gotham Writers Workshop. Or try classes offered by Poets & Writers or any number of other organizations where established writers can offer mentorship and insight. But there are also free and low-cost ways to develop your art: creating your own workshop group with fellow writers (Poets & Writers Groups was developed to help you do exactly that), reading books on craft and, most important, reading widely and contemporarily in the genre you are writing in. At the risk of sounding like an after-school special, let me say that reading is by far the best, most accessible, and most rewarding way to learn. A significant percentage of the queries I turn down are due to the writing just not being ready—which is not to say that it will never be ready. But writing, like any skill or craft, takes time to develop. If you have spent more time querying a project than you spent writing and revising it, you may want to reevaluate your process and timeline.
Finally, it’s also important to remember that just because you’ve decided to move on from a project, it’s never gone forever. This is why we say we are putting the novel in a drawer, not the trash or landfill or incinerator, unless you have a flair for dramatics. Maybe it’s not right for this point in time. Maybe it will end up being your second book. Maybe you will return to it years from now with a fresh perspective. At any rate, the process of writing that project and querying it was not wasted time—it armed you with knowledge you can use as you turn to something new.
Emma Dries is a writer and an editor as well as an agent at Triangle House Literary.
