It’s normal to make mistakes in everything we do.
Life is all about learning from one’s mistakes. My writing career is littered
with the many mistakes I have made, especially when it comes to my books.
For a long time I submitted the first book I had
written, to many Indian publishers. That was more than 10 years back. It was much
later I realized that I was flogging a dead horse. Once I pushed that
manuscript in my drawer as a hopelessly lost cause, I was at peace. All the
anxiety faded away.
Another mistake I made was by querying agents just
because they repped MG books. I had no inkling about an agent’s personal
reading taste or choice. As the rejections piled up, so did my disappointment.
It was only later when one of my blog buddies pointed out that I should query
an agent only if they represented my kind of a book. Else, all I would see were
rejections.
Another mistake I made when I submitted to Indian
publishers was not submitting simultaneously. Simultaneous submissions cut the
waiting time for us writers and also make us widen our search.
Depending on one book for too long is a mistake I
hope to never repeat. Nowadays, once I am done with one book, I move on to the
next one immediately as one never knows which book will capture an agent or editor’s
attention.
Follow up is not my strong point as I don’t want to
come across as pushy. But it’s a must when it comes to Indian Publishers.
Unless and until we follow up we never get replies.
Personalizing the query to a specific agent. Though
I never sent bulk queries starting with Dear Agent, I didn’t personalize it
either. Nowadays I research an agent, read all their interviews, try to see
what books they have repped, check them on Twitter and then mould my query so
that it doesn’t look as though I am sending queries at random.
Whew! That’s a whole lot of mistakes, right? I hope
never to repeat these mistakes again.
What about you all? Care to share your writing
related mistakes so we can all learn from it?
