Friends! First off, I'm shocked at the fact I'm even writing this blog post. These past two weeks have been a delightful change from the usual soul-crushing querying process. I'm about to be brutally honest regarding the details of how I got an agent, so forgive me if I ramble. But I know I would've appreciated a post like this when I first started querying, so here goes nothing.
I've been writing since I was twelve years old, when I concocted a horrific Divergent fanfiction on Wattpad.
I continued to finish a book every six months or so until I turned seventeen, gaining a significant following. Although they were poorly written, and I am so embarrassed by them that I refuse to share my Wattpad username, that was where my passion for writing began. That was when I started believing in myself as a writer, too, because readers genuinely enjoyed them...somehow.
This part, I don't want to go into too much detail on. I stopped writing for a few years because I got into a bad relationship that resulted in severe anxiety and depression. I lost my love for reading and writing for almost three years, which was who I was all my life. I lost my sense of purpose, and I lost myself.
Enter the man who is now my husband. Jake revived my love for myself and helped me rebuild my passion for reading and writing. He believed in me every second, especially when I fell back into old patterns of losing myself. The hardest days for me were the days that he promised me he could see my future success, and that writing even one sentence was an accomplishment. And believe me, I felt stupid writing one sentence a day and being told "I'm proud of you." It was humiliating, most of all because I used to bust out a book every six months without a problem. But looking back now, every sentence was progress. I went from a sentence a day, to a paragraph a day, to a page a day.
Eventually, mid-2022, I got enough motivation to rewrite an old book that I finished at eighteen years old. At the time, I was between jobs, and my husband convinced me that becoming a published author didn't have to be some distant goal. I could do it now, which I hadn't considered. So, I researched. And damn, there was so much to this process that I had no clue about.
My biggest help was Alyssa Matesic's Youtube channel. I watched every. single. video. that was available at the time. I read so many articles, until I was confident enough to write out a query letter and synopsis. Let me tell you, those poor agents...
I sent my first query on September 19, 2022. These were my fatal flaws:
My book was 146,000 words, and I was convinced my writing was good enough to surpass the publishing word count standard.
Before I started querying, I didn't have a fellow writer look over my query letter. In fact, at this point, I wasn't even on #writingtwt.
The letter was too short, concise, and had 0% voice. It was boring.
I didn't batch. At all. I sent out over 30 queries, to all my favorite agents, with that high word count and snooze-fest of a query letter.
Surprise, surprise...I didn't get a single request out of those 30 queries. Not one.
Here's how I corrected each of those four mistakes:
First, I had to cut my word count. Damn, was I opposed to doing this at first. And I didn't. Until about my forty-fifth query, when an agent I'll be forever grateful for left me a personalized rejection stating that my word count was too high for the industry. That was when I realized I wasn't special; I'd have to configure my book into the right word count, or I'd have to start over with a new one. But I wasn't about to give up on FREEDOM, because I'd invested my heart, soul, sweat, and tears into it. So, I got to work.
I thought it was impossible, but I started off with the most obvious side-plots that didn't add much to my book. After deleting several chapters' worth, I moved onto repetitive conversations between characters. If they discussed something similar elsewhere in the book, I deleted one. Even if I was emotionally attached to the scene. And finally, I attacked my manuscript line by line, cutting useless phrasing. What I was left with was a polished, concise version of the book I believed in before.
In the end, I managed to cut FREEDOM from 146,000 to 95,000 words. It was a grueling, heart-wrenching process. But damn, was it worth it.
My next task: find #Writingtwt and discover the support within the writing community. I had no idea how much I was missing out on by doing this all alone. My first dip into the Twitter world was #PitDark in October of 2022. I happened to see a tweet about it a couple days before the event, and I had a feeling to look into it. When I realized what it was, I participated. I got some likes from it, surprisingly, but at the time my manuscript was still at 146,000 words, so all the agents rejected it.
That didn't matter, though. What I found was much more valuable. I began growing my writing circle on Twitter, finding fellow querying writers, and felt so much relief knowing I wasn't alone. Not only that, but I found a Reddit page called PubTips where I was able to post my query letter and have it critiqued. Shockingly, the feedback was that it lacked voice.
So, I rewrote my query letter. This time, I incorporated my characters' personalities. Though it wasn't perfect, it was much better. It was with this query letter and the lower word count that I received my first full manuscript request. It was later rejected, but I knew I was on the right track.
My last lesson was the hardest to learn. The consequences for not batching my queries before I really knew what I was doing were brutal. By the time I figured it out, I had already queried almost all the agents I wanted to work with. I was left with a handful, and they were all closed due to the holidays. So, realizing I had backed myself into a corner, I knew I had to use this time to prepare myself for a sad inevitable: I needed to prepare a new manuscript.
Out of my dusty eighteen-year-old files, I found 5,000 words written for a YA romcom/thriller manuscript called SOMEBODY PINCH ME. In my opinion, it was ridiculous, voice-y to an extreme, and a risk. But I loved it, and I had loved it since I started writing it years before. My little sister, Clara, badgered me to keep writing it since the day I stopped. (She's been my biggest fan since my Wattpad days).
When I finished writing SOMEBODY PINCH ME, I wasn't sold on the idea of querying it. I wasn't sure if anyone would love it the way I did, or if my humor would be accepted. It went out to a few beta readers (which are a must-have, by the way), and I implemented some helpful feedback. My best friend, Hals Warrington, convinced me to query it about three weeks after it was polished.
(Pause for a Hals appreciation note: Hals came into my life right when I needed her. I volunteered to beta read her book, Fall in Flight, and when she realized that my ridiculous comments on her book were precisely her style of humor, we quickly became best friends. Not only that, but we both live in Arizona, so we've been able to meet up and rave about our books in person. She's an incredible writer, a passionate supporter, and a loyal friend. I'm so grateful for her.)
In the end, I decided to query only six agents with SOMEBODY PINCH ME. Then, I did something I'd never done before: I made a query announcement with my moodboard on Twitter. I'm not sure how she saw it, but Elisa Houot, an agent at The Seymour Agency, liked it.
Obviously, I queried her. She had rejected FREEDOM in one of those first forty queries when the word count was insanely high, but this was an invitation to try again with a new book. Soon after, she requested my partial, which I was ecstatic about. During #KidLitPit another few days later, she liked my pitch once more, to which I replied letting her know that she already had my partial.
Two days later, she requested my full manuscript. I was so excited and hopeful, but as all querying writers know, it's dangerous to get your hopes up. So, I wrote it off as a rejection in my mind. The next morning, I received a message to change the font size from 12 to 16, because she wanted to read it on a tablet and the words were too small. Obviously, I panicked, because that meant she was going to start reading right away. I wasn't home at the time, so I sent it in as soon as I arrived, at about one in the afternoon.
The next morning, I was making a cheese meme for the wonderful Helen Lane. Yes, a cheese meme. Proof:
Immediately after tweeting this to Helen, I checked my email for the fiftieth time since I woke up, and there was a QueryTracker response from Elisa. Certain this was another rejection, I opened the message. To my surprise, she let me know that she had already finished my book, and she wanted to talk. That. Same. Day.
Shock is an understatement. Needless to say, I didn't get any work done that day. My poor employers...I was so anxious, I couldn't do anything but stare at the wall for the two hours leading up to the Zoom call.
Turns out, Elisa was so excited about SOMEBODY PINCH ME that she read it in one night. She loved the voice I was so iffy about. The humor. The characters. Everything she said resonated with me. Her interest in my future projects. In FREEDOM, even though she originally rejected it. In believing in me, my writing, and my works in progress. I felt so strongly that I had found the agent to champion my books, and the many others to come.
After two weeks, I was proud to sign a contract with Elisa Houot, starting our professional relationship together.
My biggest takeaways from this process that I want to share with writers still in the querying trenches:
Timing really is everything. You never know when an agent will be looking for exactly what you're offering. Go with your gut.
Post, post, post! I know it's scary to put your work out on social media out of fear that ideas may be stolen. But if I hadn't posted that random moodboard and Elisa hadn't liked it, I might not have queried her again.
Make writing friends. Have critique partners. Take the advice that resonates, but consider all their advice with an open mind.
Don't give up. Keep writing. Keep querying. Keep getting better.
I know the original version of FREEDOM would never have gotten me an agent. It wasn't ready. I learned so much in the process of preparing that manuscript, and I'm grateful for those lessons.
To all my friends, the writing community, my loving family, and everyone who supported me in any capacity: a sincerest thank you from me. You are incredible. I appreciate you all more than you could now.
NOW...Here are the honest, slightly depressing querying stats for each of my manuscripts:
For FREEDOM:
Total queries sent: 96
Total responses: 78
Total rejections: 73
Full requests: 6
Offers: 0
For SOMEBODY PINCH ME:
Total queries sent: 7
Total responses: 7
Total rejections: 6
Full requests: 1
Offers: 1
And, for those who are curious to see, this is FREEDOM's query letter after I refined it with the help of Hals:
Dear ____,
It is my pleasure to present FREEDOM, a 95,000 word YA/Adult crossover magical realism novel. Combining the morally gray themes of ALL OF US VILLAINS with the dark magical aspects of THE NIGHT CIRCUS, this story will appeal to fans of hidden truths, curses, ghosts, and mental health recovery. As a content warning, this manuscript contains some themes of parental abuse and suicide. This is intended to be a series, but it can be reworked as a standalone.
On the 31st of October each year, a monumental gala is held in the Clouse family’s haunted mansion. Most guests are ignorant to the dark side of the party, but a handful are bound to it by cursed tattoos. By the end of the night, one of them will die. Paris Lowe, a stubborn 18 year old girl, is determined to make it out alive.
During the months leading up to the event, her bond linking her to the party causes hallucinations from her bloody past. After each one, a new tattoo forms. Soon, it becomes difficult to separate her mind's tricks from reality. Despite the bleak circumstances, she knows, and hates, that there's only one person who can help her—the infamous host of the party, Harrison Clouse.
As Halloween ticks closer, Paris and Harrison must work together to find a way to put an end to the party...before it puts an end to her. In a sweeping story of pain, sacrifice, and inner turmoil, the two find they have more in common than they first thought. They are harrowed by the same ghosts, the same hauntings. Once the tattoo symbolizing "Freedom" appears on Paris's body, she realizes that's exactly what she wants. And she's the only one who can get her there.
Paris must uncover every dark secret the Clouse family has buried before Halloween. If not, she has reason to believe the next victim will be her.
Please find below the first [#] pages of my novel. I thank you sincerely for your consideration.
All the best,
Isabelle Martinsen
Once again, thank you to everyone who's supported me on this journey, and will continue to support me on the road to publication. You're a blessing. Don't give up. Even if it's one line a day, write that book. Even if you're not sure if your query is perfect yet, keep at it. I promise all that work will pay off.