Sometimes, the thing you thought was going to save you doesn’t.

After I started querying my first novel on November 1st, 2020, I got that sinking feeling in my gut that this wasn’t going to go the way I thought.

I tried to outrun that feeling by getting busy with my school work and getting busy with more edits. But no matter how busy I got, I couldn’t shake the feeling.

In December of 2020, my friend told me about the Pitch Wars happening on Twitter/X that day, and I decided to take my chances and participate.

I sent a few pitches out into the cloud and got crickets back until I posted one pitch that got a hit.

To say I was delighted is too underwhelming of a description. I sent off my submission to the literary agent who liked my post and figured I might hear back, but more likely not.

Until the next day when I returned home from a dentist appointment to a full manuscript request.

I spent two days in bed editing the manuscript. (Another fatal flaw in the story of my first novel.)

At that point, this was officially the third rewrite, but even though I had taken a month to make edits, as I read through the current iteration, I found there were things I wanted to add or flesh out further, and two days was not enough time to do that.

But remember, I was DESPERATE and felt this sense of urgency that if I didn’t send it out RIGHT AWAY that I was going to miss my chance.

I made the edits and sent off the full manuscript with fingers crossed, but I knew in my heart that that version of it still wasn’t ready.

As you can imagine, two weeks later I received a rejection email to the tune of I wanted to like this more, but unfortunately I didn’t fall in love with this.

I was crushed, of course. But if I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t surprised. It needed more work. I knew the novel’s flaws, but I didn’t know how to fix them.

Enter: the editor.

During the Pitch Wars event, an editor reached out to me about working together on my manuscript. When I got the rejection, I thought it was time to get a second set of professional eyes on the story.

Kylie was a huge help with developmental edits. I felt like I was finally on the right path and was hopeful that her contribution to the project was only going to get me closer to my goal.

More months passed. More queries were sent. More rejections and silence were received. I soldiered on.

I knew that rejection was part of the agreement when pursuing my writing, but even when you expect it, it’s still hard.

And I was on a deadline. I wanted to leave teaching, and June was looming ever closer.

It’s wasn’t until a friend in a writing group said something that changed my life.

What did she say?

Find out in next Saturday’s blog when I tell you about how I got my first paid writing job.