I’ve shared my query letter drafts with a few online groups as I struggle to describe my novel within only about three hundred words. It’s made me have a big think about what people’s reaction has been. Not friends or people in my social circle, just random strangers. After all, it would be random strangers who’d consider reading my novel once my devoted loved ones have read it.
It doesn’t feel great to be told that my lived experience of being a Millennial who graduated from college in 2009 and struggled to find a career for years after that isn’t realistic or interesting. I can’t tell if I need to really rework my selling points or the story itself.
So for this week, I’m mostly sad.
I’ve probably got a lot of revisions to do. Big, overhauly type ones. I hesitate to completely start over because I’ve worked on this story for the past three or so years. The query readers want more conflict, so short of introducing a monster in the third act, I have to come up with something more conflicting than being poor and practically frozen in time.
Being a writer is so isolating sometimes, isn’t it?
Sara Mazariegos 