Welp, I’m back here again.

After five months of a mix of procrastinating and editing, I finally resubmitted my manuscript to the agent who requested the revise and resubmit. (Check out that story here!)

After I checked in with her a week later, she responded with this:

…which means I’m heading back into the query trenches. (Where I should have never left, tbh.)

Luckily before I even got that response from her, I reached out to some of the Facebook groups I’m a part of to get some advice.

Through Facebook, I learned something I should have learned almost a year ago when I started querying: only query a few agents at a time. That way, you can get feedback (hopefully) from each batch of agents and change things up in your letter/manuscript before sending it off again.

Me, being me, queried over 100 agents at once with the same letter—before getting a ton of feedback on said letter. I just wanted to get it done, so I didn’t think twice about it. Now, I’m dealing with the consequences.

It feels like I’ve queried every YA agent out there, though I know in reality (and someone reminded me on Facebook) that I haven’t. Luckily, a lot of agencies I queried allow queries to multiple agents, so I at least have a few to start out with before having to find new agencies again. (Plus there’s the agent’s colleague she mentioned, of course!)

It’s all a part of the journey, I guess. Constantly working through the mistakes because I’m doing this all by myself. For so many years I was lost by the idea of publishing, so I’m honestly just proud of myself for making it this far.

Most of the advice I got on Facebook is to just write something else, that no one gets signed on their first novel. I’m having such a hard time giving up on it though. It has always been my best story, my baby, the one I wanted out in the world first.

I’m sure everyone feels that way about their first novel, but it still hurts.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m going to keep writing. But I’m never giving up on In the Sky. I’m really going to focus on getting as many eyes on my letter before I send it as I can. It’ll take some work finding agents I haven’t submitted to yet, but I can’t stop now. I won’t let myself.