An ending and maybe a beginning

Playing publishing chutes and ladders

Last week, I got what I believe will be the very last rejection from an agent for my young adult novel, the work that kept me sane and alive during the worst days of the pandemic. I sent it out to over a hundred agents over the course of almost two years. Yes, that’s how slow this whole process goes.

I’m only the tiniest bit sad about this ending. I knew it was coming. I was prepared. Resigned, I guess you might say.

I got a lot of positive feedback on the novel. Also a lot of confusing feedback. The premise was great, but the characters weren’t well-developed enough. The characters were great, but the plot was weak. My favorite was an agent who said that this topic (girls and sports) was totally the next hot thing in young adult, but she still had no idea how she’d sell the novel.

A ladder that leads nowhere feels about right. Photo by Xin on Unsplash

That’s how it goes in publishing, like a very fucked-up game of chutes and ladders. I thought I had crossed that big hurdle of getting an agent, but then I lost them. Back to square one. Go directly to literary jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

I love my young adult novel. I love the story and the characters. I feel like it’s a story that will resonate with young people. I wrote it partly for my students and I want them to be able to read it.

So I’m contemplating taking the leap into self-publishing. It’s hard for this not to feel like a failure—a sign I wasn’t “good enough,” even though I know being good enough doesn’t necessarily get you traditionally published.

Then I remind myself, the publishing industry is sort of a mess. One writer friend of mine recently lost her agent because they were leaving the business and now after two amazing, critically-acclaimed books, she’s agent-less again. People who work in publishing (especially those who are young and/or women and/or Black and/or people of color and/or queer) are underpaid and overworked. There’s still not enough diversity. People get told, “Oh, we already published one novel about trans issues this year,” as if there’s a quota. I guess there is and that’s messed up.

Also, Virginia Woolf self-published and that’s pretty good company to be in. No publishers wanted the weirdness that was To the Lighthouse or Mrs. Dalloway. So Virginia and Leonard started Hogarth Press and look how that turned out. Well, okay, not the best example, what with the walking into the river, but still. If the goal is to have people read what I wrote, self-publishing accomplishes that goal. The rest is gravy, right?

So, stay tuned and just as a teaser, here’s the query letter, fresh from over one hundred rejections, for your reading pleasure:

Amanda Harkins is fed up. The Madison boys’ basketball team has been getting all the attention and money for way too long. The boys barely even won a game last season while the girls’ team almost made it to State. But here she is again, fighting to practice in the good gym with the girls’ team, even though they signed up for it and the boys did not.

Amanda and her friends—Maddie and Dot—decide it’s time to take action. Amanda’s an aspiring activist and this is one wrong it’s past time to right. They challenge the boys to play a game for rights to the good gym. But Amanda wants to do more than just win. She wants revenge and she’ll go all-out to get it. One game. Boys against girls. The losers agree to quit the team and give up their whole season.

But has Amanda gone too far? Maddie’s got a dangerous secret that Amanda’s quest for revenge threatens to reveal. A missed season could cost Dot an athletic scholarship, her only chance to escape her family’s troubled past. Amanda thinks it’s justice she wants, but is she really trying get back at the boy who ditched her to become one of the popular kids? The three girls leave it all on the court to settle the question—what does it really take to be equal?

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Thanks for reading and for all the lovely things you had to say about smiling and my smile in particular this week. Your comments and responses, online and in real life, are what keep me at this insanity that is writing.