What Have I Learned From a Year of Querying?

Ambiguous rejections, self persistence, and working in the dark

Since April 2025, I’ve been querying my novel Safe Haven — a sci-fi retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth — my first ever writing project to reach this phase. I wish I could come away with some concrete life lessons from this year in the querying trenches, or at least some ‘tips and tricks.’ But the life lessons I’ve gotten from this experience are much more nebulous.

The ups and the downs

On one hand, I’ve been surfing on the learning curve when it comes to the entire querying process from writing the letter, finding comps, researching agents, and dealing with the emotional fallout… some of which I have discussed in previous articles. 

On the other hand, I’m still in a slush pile of my own making. I’ve tried out six different versions of a query letter without any of them having significantly better response than the others (although version six hasn’t gotten enough responses yet to evaluate). 

I mean, I haven’t gotten much response to my querying at all. As of date, it has only one partial and one full manuscript request, both later rejected. The conventional advice is that you should get a manuscript request at least one out of ten queries… so I’m way under the curve. And I can’t tell if its my query letter than sucks, my opening pages that suck, my agent researching that sucks, if my book’s concept/genre combo isn’t marketable (what I’m beginning to suspect), or I’m entirely unlucky (also a culprit, I’m sure). 

What does a rejection even mean?Literary agents responses don’t help. While I completely understand why they do it this way… if the respond at all, their rejections are so carefully and generically worded as to not push you over the edge that they are meaningless to draw conclusions from.

The rejections are so generic and impersonal, the one time an agent specifically said they where intrigued by the pitch in my query but didn’t connect with the sample pages of my manuscript, it was like nirvana. Like, wow, actually useful information to learn from!

Now, I’ve talked many times about dealing with rejection as a writer. But its been more than rejection that has gotten to me during my year in querying. It’s the ambiguity of said rejections. The agents who don’t respond unless interested. The careful meaningless form rejection letters. I don’t know what lesson to learn. 

I’ve used the whole process as an opportunity to get better. Better queries, better comps, better opening pages. I’ve followed the advice to “write the next book.” 

What’s next

But… I believe in the book I’m querying. I believe in the writing and storytelling style I’ve developed over my lifetime so far. Whether through my original short stories or days of writing fanfiction in the past, I know there are readers who enjoy what I write. 

I believe in my book and want to give it its best chance at success. Which is why I haven’t stopped querying despite the lackluster response I’ve received from agents so far. It’s also why I’m contemplating potential self-publishing; not as a plan b but as an alternate path. And one I don’t consider to be easier even if you don’t have to get past traditional gatekeepers. But I’m not at that point. (If I take that step, I want to have a few more manuscripts close to ready as I know frequency and volume of publishing are big part of self-publishing success.)

For years, my big struggle was developing my writing craft and actually finishing a novel manuscript that would be good enough for publishing. Now that I reached that milestone, it turns out querying is just a whole other fight. 

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