Is Patience Really a Virtue? 

I sent my latest novel, One Good Kick, a psychological thriller, out to agents about a month ago. I've since received four rejections from the 16 agents I submitted to. Many of the agents said they would respond within four to twelve weeks, but won't give a personal response because they are too busy. Many other agents said they wouldn't respond at all unless interested (because they're too busy), so, if I don't hear back from them within two to six months, assume they aren't interested.

Now, I realize agents are busy. They are inundated with queries every day. But authors like me put in an inordinate amount of work into our novels, and labor tirelessly over our query letters and synopses. We are constantly told to be patient with agents, editors, and the like, because they are all so busy. But they are not patient with us, who have essentially done all the hard work. They take one look at the first sentence of a query or sample and throw it in the trash or the slush pile, then don't respond or send out an automated, generic response that doesn't help us at all.

(Yes, this is an actual rejection email I received.)

Many agents who claim to work with new authors, often won't even look at the work if there isn't some indication in their query that they have been published on some level in a mass marketing kind of way, or they have some kind of fame behind their name.

I've been to many writers' conferences in the past where agents were on a panel to talk about the process and take questions. Eager would-be authors gathered by the hordes to hear their pearls of wisdom and get answers about the overwhelming vagueness of the process. What we got was a bunch of agents telling us all the things writers do that make them look stupid and ignorant, like writing in a query about "my adorable pit bull Fluffy." Or how we disrespect them by misspelling their name or writing "To whom this may concern." They need to be noticed and addressed personally to show we care.

(Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association Conference in Hartford, CT)

The whole onus of patience and caring drops on the shoulders of the writer. But it's the writers who put in the torturous months, if not years (as is my case) of writing and rewriting, editing and rewriting. And those grueling countless moments of trudging through our insecurities, the painstaking, time-consuming research, and the never-ending work toward perfection to make the product that the agent is trying to sell.

The alternative? Self-publish. But now we are even more insecure, because we can't trust our friends and family to let us know that what we've written is actually good enough to publish. And should we publish anyway, we have to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get a good cover, edit the manuscript, and format the manuscript. Even with a professional edit, it's difficult to know if the product is good, because the editor gets paid whether the novel sells or not. An editor who works for an agent has a vested interest in the product because they don't get paid UNLESS it sells.

So, we writers who long to be published authors are screwed no matter how you twist it. And what do we do about it? We write anyway, and continue to slog through the cruel and frightening process, forcing ourselves to keep our dreams alive. The only alternative is to quit and that's not an alternative for those who truly love to write.

Right now, I'm waiting, and I'm not getting any younger because time only works one way. The longer I wait for a response from an agent, the older I get, and the older I get, the closer I get to... well, you know the rest. If only agents would be more thoughtful regarding the predicament of the writer and respond in a timely and personal fashion. I'm not asking you to take me on if you don't like the work. I'm just asking for the same respect from you that you require from me. I don't think that's a lot.

Anyway, here's a poem about time I thought you might like. It's a double nonet in the concrete form. My advice is to read it twice, once forward and again backward (from the bottom up). It's not really related to my post, except in a tangential fashion, but I feel it fits nonetheless.

Here's a little insight about the labor involved in writing a short poem like this that may help indicate the enormity of commitment it takes to write an entire novel:

A nonet starts with a nine syllable line, then each line that follows is one syllable less than the one before. So, the first line is nine syllables, the next line is eight, then seven, then six, and so on. I decided to make a double nonet, to show the irreversibility of time.  Notice, the poem reads the same way forward as it does backward. I also put it in the concrete shape of an hour glass. That means, not only does the first line have one more syllable than the second, but it has to be visually longer than the second without cheating on the spacing.

For example, the word "I" is one syllable and is spelled with one thin letter. The word "through" is also one syllable, but it's spelled with  seven mostly rounded letters, taking up much more space on the line. Therefore, I had to carefully choose my words to not only make the poem work auditorily, but also visually. And it had to be true to the theme.

Anyway, here it is. I hope you enjoy it.

TIME

 

because there’s no way to reverse time

we make mistakes and live with them

can’t slingshot back to fix things

brush the dust off and learn

then make more mistakes

and learn some more

make mistakes

and learn

live

and learn

make mistakes

and learn some more

then make more mistakes

brush the dust off and learn

can’t slingshot back to fix things

we make mistakes and live with them

because there’s no way to reverse time

(Now, read this again from the bottom up.)