Kaitlyn Loved Querying

Look, I never said I was normal, okay? But I LOVED the querying process. Not writing my query letter, mind you, but the process of querying. Since the other debutantes have done such a good job covering the how-tos and the whys of the query process, I thought I might dive in and tell you how I learned to love it.

First up, you have to believe in your book. You wrote a whole book! And then you revised it! AND THEN YOU REVISED IT SOME MORE! (Hopefully. If that’s not true, it’s probably time to do some more revising.) That alone is an enormous accomplishment that you should be super proud of. And CLING TO THAT PRIDE, because querying is a rocky ride. I sent 89 queries before I signed with my agent. EIGHTY-NINE. It takes a lot of love to keep believing in a book for that long.

Next, find your inner data nerd. One of the things that helped me the most while I was querying was looking at the stats. I tracked all of my queries in Query Tracker, and I loved pouring through all of the agent data available there. It helped me to see when I *might* hear a response and that, in turn, helped to quell my anxiety. (And sometimes ramp it way the hell up, but that’s life with anxiety amirite?? deep sigh.)

Finally, find your people. Find them online, find them in person, but find them. This process can, at times, resemble an episode of The Good Place, and without your people, it would be pretty rough. So reach out. Find other people to go on this journey with you. You’ll be glad you did.

Author: Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

Kaitlyn Sage Patterson grew up with her nose in a book outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. After completing her M.F.A., she moved to South Korea, where she taught English and started writing her debut novel. THE DIMINISHED will be published by HarlequinTEEN in April 2018, followed by its sequel in 2019. When she's not staring off into space and trying to untangle some particularly troublesome plot point, she can be found in her kitchen, perfecting the most difficult recipe she can find; or at the barn, where she rides and trains dressage horses; or with her husband, spoiling their sweet rescue dogs.