Querying woes, continued
Jun. 8th, 2024 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkI'm trying to distract myself from querying by overhauling my skincare routine, lol. I don't like spending a lot of money on skincare, but my skin has been looking bad, so it's probably time to upgrade my cleanser (and maybe my moisturizer). And I'm finally going to tackle smoothing out my skin tone and getting rid of the milia on my face.
I mentioned before that I can't distract myself with a new writing project because it typically takes me a year to a year and a half to come up with an idea I'm passionate enough to write. Or, in other words, it takes a year or more before I feel like I have something to say, enough to write a book about it. It's like I pour myself into every book I write, and I drain myself so completely of thoughts and emotions that it takes a long time for the dry well to refill.
I've been thinking, and maybe the reason why I've been spiraling so hard is that this round of querying reminds me of the last time I was on submission—with a book that I thought was fantastic, but which met with apathy from editors. The dissonance between expectation and reality is really hard for me to cope with. And it feels like I'm reliving that trauma.
It's also hard not to get frustrated when I see the kinds of books that get agent and editor attention are literally the same old, bland, mid-sounding white people fantasies. It's like publishing as a whole has decided "we don't want to pretend we care about BIPOC anymore." Even though, as a reader, the vast majority of my fantasy reading is BIPOC fantasy because I want something different.
Sigh.
I mentioned before that I can't distract myself with a new writing project because it typically takes me a year to a year and a half to come up with an idea I'm passionate enough to write. Or, in other words, it takes a year or more before I feel like I have something to say, enough to write a book about it. It's like I pour myself into every book I write, and I drain myself so completely of thoughts and emotions that it takes a long time for the dry well to refill.
I've been thinking, and maybe the reason why I've been spiraling so hard is that this round of querying reminds me of the last time I was on submission—with a book that I thought was fantastic, but which met with apathy from editors. The dissonance between expectation and reality is really hard for me to cope with. And it feels like I'm reliving that trauma.
It's also hard not to get frustrated when I see the kinds of books that get agent and editor attention are literally the same old, bland, mid-sounding white people fantasies. It's like publishing as a whole has decided "we don't want to pretend we care about BIPOC anymore." Even though, as a reader, the vast majority of my fantasy reading is BIPOC fantasy because I want something different.
Sigh.
