Sending Your Baby Into the World

I’ve been procrastinating. A lot. I know there are many people in the world who would not censure me for this. I’ve got lots of fellow procrastinators out there. We could form a club so as to support one another in our misery, but we’d never get around to it.

The more difficult and onerous the task is, the more likely we are to put it off. So, it’s no surprise that I’m having trouble getting around to doing this particular thing, because it is the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. It’s worse than looking for a job, and we all know how much that sucks. Looking for a job is way worse than actually doing a job, even when the job you’re doing sucks.

I’m going to query my manuscript to publishers.

I have done this before. It did not go well.

Sending your manuscript out to a publisher or agent is like sending your child to kindergarten. Except that the school can reject your child, saying, ‘we only accept the brightest and best-looking children, and your kid isn’t up to snuff.’

Oh sure, you can dress your child up in cute clothes. You can even prepare them for school by teaching them the ABCs and socializing them by allowing them to interact with the sort of random children they will meet at school. And it’s still soul-crushingly difficult to drop them off at the school door on that first day and then drive away.

At least, so I’ve been told. Having no children myself, I can only imagine it’s like this. But with a manuscript—which is very much like my baby, since it’s the only thing I will leave behind when I shed this mortal coil—there’s more to it than that. It’s not just your manuscript—which is the result of months (or even years) of creative toil—that will be judged. Your cover letter, which must have a book blurb, will also be judged. And publishers require a synopsis, which is unbelievably difficult to write (it’s like describing your child’s skeletal system, without any of the cuteness and cleverness that makes your child an appealing whole person).

What stuns me the most about this whole process is how much more difficult it is than writing the damn manuscript. Before I had ever written a manuscript, I had no idea if I could. It’s a big job, after all. You need characters, with unmet wants and needs, and you have to have a conflict. And then you must propel them through the conflict to a satisfactory conclusion on the other side. All while eking out somewhere between 75,000 and 85,000 words. Does that sound hard? It should, because it’s not easy.

Honestly, I was amazed the first time I wrote a complete manuscript. Amazed that I could do it. Also amazed at how much I enjoyed doing it. This was it! I wanted to be an author. What a great job!

But writing the manuscript is a freaking breeze compared to the writing of a book blurb, cover letter, and one-page synopsis that makes your manuscript sound compelling in 500 words or less. And I have to have two comparable books—because your book can’t just be good, it has to be sellable! Imagine having to find comps for your kid? “Um, Little Joey down the street is similar to my child. They both took to potty training pretty well.”

The querying process is like the looking-for-a-job process: It’s hard and it sucks. But you’ve got to do it, right?

Well, I’ve wasted a good half hour or so writing this blog, so that was time well procrastinated. I suppose I should move on to writing my query letter. Or maybe I can find something else to do. Perhaps start a new manuscript?

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