The agents that kept me going

You probably don't need to look far to hear people in the querying trenches say it can be a hard, bloody trudge.

Throughout this seemingly endless trek, it's sometimes even harder to keep track of the direction you're headed, not to mention it's often hard to keep a hold of the glimmer of positivity. However, the agent responses I gathered throughout my querying process turned out to be a significant help to me.

Many terrific blogs describe step-by-step what agent responses can mean and how you know if your submission might need more work. Instead, I want to focus on how each personal response can feed the energy to keep going.

My first few queries only got form letters in return, and rightfully so. My work wasn't there back then, and my skills needed polishing. But as time went by, I learned to hone my craft, and soon I started getting personal responses from agents. Some were short notes, telling me what they liked about the work, and others were invitations to send more since they liked my style. The more I wrote and learned, the more personal the responses became.

In the beginning, it was these few, simple lines that made all the difference. But then, just a word here, or a comment there, was enough to give me the boost I needed to keep going. Then, finally, someone liked what I wrote and took time from their busy schedule to tell me this.

In later works, an agent could write a page telling me what they liked about the story and explain why they couldn't take the manuscript. These responses were gold to me and translated straight into writing energy.

When I finally found my agent, it was important that I let the other agents who had been part of this positive sensation know how much their responses had helped me. I wanted them to understand what their words had meant, to know they had given me the confidence to keep going, and to let them know their response had fed the energy that made the whole experience bearable.

So, I sent them emails where I told them I'd found an agent, and many thanks to them for their words of encouragement. I will always be grateful. Because if they could carve out time from their precious schedule to send me a confidence booster, why can't I do the same?