Protecting yourself emotionally when querying

The querying process can be very hard mentally and emotionally. If you want to be traditionally published, though, it is one of the ways you’re most likely to land an agent.

You can participate in Twitter pitch wars, attend a conference with pitch sessions, and so on but you don’t need to wait for a special time or spend the money on conference fees to pitch (query) an agent who is open for queries.

So don’t participate in these kinds of public spectacles if it’s detrimental to your mental heath. If you find them fun and energizing, great! Do it. But if you spend the whole day refreshing Twitter and looking for likes while feeling sick to your stomach, then skip it.

Query the regular way and immediately do something else to keep your mind off it. If you feel like you can’t take rejection right now, it’s good to take some time off from querying. There is nothing wrong with feeling like you’re not in the right emotional space for the process.

Or you could set up a Gmail account just for querying that you only check once a week. Or, get a friend to check it for you. There is nothing wrong with protecting your mental health this way.

Publishing is a cold, calculating business no matter how much people talk about all the warm fuzzies and it can brutal to keep subjecting yourself to rejection. It’s okay to do whatever you need to protect yourself.