On my world, it means hope.

So I haven't posted in a while! It's because the querying process has been stressing. me. out.

Remember how one of my goals was to try to become better at coping with publishing stress? Yeah, I've been failing at that so far. I've realized that a BIG anxiety trigger for me is expecting something to happen soon, but not knowing exactly when, and also feeling like I have no control over the result. That was exactly the reason why I coped so poorly with being on submission for Novel #4 last year, and it's why I haven't been dealing well with querying right now. :(

Querying...hasn't been going well so far. I ended up panic-withdrawing a bunch of my initial queries after a string of rejections because I was pretty sure something was wrong with my query letter. I revised the query letter, but I do feel bad, wondering if maybe the earlier agents rejected it because my query letter didn't do the story justice. It's tough, because I feel like this is a fantastic book, but no one's been interested so far.

I mean, I guess to be fair, I felt that way about Novel #4 too, and now in hindsight I can see problems with it. But that just leads me to a whole new paranoia—am I so bad at judging what's a commercial story that I can't trust my own taste? If so, that would make it seem like I should just give up on traditional publishing, because I can't even identify what a marketable story is.

It sucks too because there's nothing I can use to take my mind off querying. I'm not the kind of writer who can jump into a new project right away, given that it usually takes me about a year after finishing one book before I have enough ideas to start a new one. I haven't had any video games to play since Tears of the Kingdom. And I haven't been having a great reading year, either—many of the new book releases this year I've found to be pretty mediocre so far. (And even when I enjoy a book, I burn through it quickly and then am back to twiddling my thumbs. The downside of being a fast reader...)

This long weekend in particular has been agonizing for me, because I know an agent has my full and I'm expecting them to get back to me soon. Which suuuuuucks for my anxiety. They've sent me enthusiastic emails so far, but after the initial excitement I felt, I realized that makes me feel worse—because I'm going to feel so much worse if they reject because the rest of the manuscript didn't live up to their expectations. And it's already happened once—another agent from my first round did request the full pretty quickly, but they rejected, and their rejection said they stopped reading halfway through because the book didn't live up to their expectations.

When that first agent requested my full manuscript, I was hopeful, but I had a prickling sense of dread too—like "I'm afraid to hope for an offer of representation from the first agent who requested, because my publication journey has never been that easy." Now I'm trying to make peace with the possibility that this second agent will reject, too. In which case, I'll be back to waiting around to see if any of the other agents I queried will request the full. Sigh...

Well, I'm officially in the query trenches again. It seems that querying has gotten slower every year, so I'm desperately trying to figure out what to do to occupy my mind so I'm not just sitting around anxiously waiting for news.

In theory, my backup plan if Novel #5 dies in the query trenches is to rewrite Novel #4 and query that. Currently, though, I feel like I'm still too close to that book to effectively think of ways to rewrite it. I'm waiting for my critique partner to return from a trip so we can brainstorm together.

I've definitely been feeling too tired (and burned out by the publishing industry) to write something new. It doesn't help matters that I don't feel like I've read a good book in forever. I find myself rewatching The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi and Scumbag System to entertain myself. :')

Speaking of, while I still dearly wish and hope to see Scumbag System season 2 one day, the shine has rubbed off the story as a whole for me, mostly because I feel like there are just way too many consent problems with the latter third of the book. Honestly, maybe a censored screen adaptation would fix the relationship issues, in a way...?

It's also fun for me to think about how MDZS and Scum Villain really feel like two sides of the same coin. It feels to me like Mo Xiang Tong Xiu started Scum Villain as a parody of tropes, and then decided to write MDZS to play the tropes straight and justify them. Both stories have a "villain protagonist" (who dresses in red and black, to boot!) who were orphaned at a young age, were thrown off a cliff and thereafter gained "demonic" power.

The weirdest feeling I've ever had is when I want to be writing but have nothing to write.

Looking back over my personal records, since 2015, I've written one book every two years. It's not a reflection of the speed with which I draft/revise, but rather, I don't seem to get an idea I'm truly passionate about writing until a year or so has passed since the last book I wrote.

Maybe that's the natural outcome when most of my books are personal to me in some way - I only have something to say about my own experiences when enough time has passed for me to have new thoughts/experiences/reflections. Though I have a commercial sensibility, I can't seem to write books solely for a commercial purpose.

But yeah, it's a very strange feeling when I want to be writing but feel like my head is empty of ideas. T_T

In the past, I've rarely if ever reread my books/stories once they've been published, in large part due to a fear that they might not be as good as I thought they were at the time. (I've still never reread Novel #1.)

Well...I guess that fear came true with Novel #4!

I asked my oldest CP to reread the book, and they came back and said "Novel #5 is WAY better."

So...hahaha, I guess it died on submission to editors for a reason??

Still, my CP and I both agree that the premise is still great, it's just that maybe the execution needs improvement. And isn't that what I need an agent with a keen editorial vision for??

So...anyway, that just goes to show that I need an agent who can help me grow as a writer, not just half-ass their job and hope I've written a brilliant novel that they don't have to do much work on.

It also makes me wonder...if Novel #5 (epic fantasy) is "way better" than Novel #4 (detective fantasy), is writing epic fantasy my true calling after all?? (lol.) It's a funny thing to think about, considering that I used to hate epic fantasy (largely because I don't like tons of POVs or slow pacing).

My CP thinks that because Novel #5 was clearly inspired by other books I'd read (and also donghua like Mo Dao Zu Shi and Scumbag System), while Novel #4 was kind of me trying to discover a genre for myself (I'd tried to read other fantasy/mystery blends but didn't enjoy any of them), that's why Novel #5 is much better. Which, maybe!

I do tend to write books that are (a) dissimilar to my previous work, and (b) dissimilar to what I've read (following the old adage of "write the book you want to read" [but haven't read yet]). So...yeah, it's hard for me to use my books as "practice" since I just end up jumping to something completely different for my next project. At least, different in terms of genre/structure; as a writer, I do return to certain themes and characterizations.

I might have mentioned this before, but as an author, I have a very "focus on the current project" mindset. And being a writer without a traditional publishing deal has strengthened that mindset. I don't have lists of books I want to write; in fact, I seem to only come up with a book idea I feel passionate about once every two years. And those ideas inevitably take me by surprise. So, will I write another epic fantasy in the future? I feel doubtful right now, but who knows!

So.........I thought I would take a break from writing/revising, but I found myself feeling so antsy that I decided to start revising Novel #4. (I've also run out of ARCs and books to read for the time being, sigh.)

Miraculously, I do have some ideas for how to revise the book now. Not ideas for major rewrites, but tweaks here and there to make the mystery more interesting and possibly make individual scenes more compelling.

But that's led me to feel sour, too.

Being a marginalized person, especially a multiply marginalized person, in traditional publishing often feels like not only are the barriers higher for you than others, but also, no one cares enough to mentor you to improve. You have to be twice as good as your peers, because if not, gatekeepers will just say "you're not good enough" and leave you to flounder on your own to figure out how to get better.

All of my beta readers loved Novel #4. My agent didn't point out any major problems with it. But I did not get a single bit of useful feedback from all the editors who rejected it. The "kindest" rejections were "I just didn't feel drawn into the story enough" or subjective reasons for rejecting. The worst were the ghosts and the form rejections. Only one editor even commented on the premise, which I thought was a fresh and compelling hook, but apparently editors didn't.

It just feels like I'm left to fumble in the dark and figure out how to edit my books perfectly myself before editors will take me seriously.

I've read a bunch of books over the past week, and at least three of them had romantic subplots that I really didn't care for. And I've been thinking about why.

Sometimes I (half-jokingly) think I'm just not allocishet enough to appreciate heterosexual romances between cis and allo characters anymore, but I'm starting to think there's something more specific to it.

The three books I read recently all had the same problem. The male love interests turned into major simps for the female protagonists for no real reason we're shown in the page. And that's why I fell out of love with the romantic subplots.

It does feel like a specific kind of wish fulfillment when it comes from female authors (who I assume are allocishet themselves). Like, the idea of wanting a man who will die for the female character but is kind of flat and amorphous as an actual person. I don't necessarily think authors do this on purpose, but I wonder if the romances end up this way due to confirmation bias from the author. As in, the author thinks this couple is cute, so they believe the reader will think the couple is cute too, without actually doing much to show why. (Which is something you can get away with in fanfic, but not in original fiction.)

I used to not enjoy most M/F romances because the guy was always a jerk. But "paper cut-out perfect BF" is, while less problematic, not emotionally engaging for me, either. I want to know why the two romantic leads like each other in order to buy a romantic plot. Why they work well together, why they complement each other, why they enjoy each other's company.

I don't know, I wish there could be more fantasy novels published without a major M/F romantic plot. Or maybe have a M/M romantic plot instead, but those are still vanishingly rare for some reason.

I'm done with the first draft of Novel #5!!!

It's a little under 113k words. By far the longest book I've ever written. My target was 120k words, but I'm glad it's under, since I always add during revisions and now I can do so without stress.

I'm hoping to finish my own revision pass by the end of the month, though we'll see if that happens. My main revision plans are to flesh out some scenes, weave in a minor character subplot, flesh out character arcs generally, and expand descriptions. I've gotten some advance feedback on Part II of my book, and now I'm waiting on advance feedback on Part III to make sure the central mystery makes sense (which is my main concern).

Once I'm done with all of my revisions, then it's time for general beta reader feedback.

I thought I'd be happier, but really, I feel like I've been exhausted for 1000 years. "^^ I'm looking forward to being able to take a break.

I've wanted to write this post for a while now, except my mind got stuck in the loop of "I want to write about Yellowface but I don't want to read the book because RF Kuang is on my personal hate list" and for some reason, it only just occurred to me that I could just write a blog post about it, lol.

For those who don't know, Yellowface by RF Kuang is a literary fiction novel about a white woman who steals her Chinese American friend's manuscript and passes it off as her own (I've linked the Goodreads page if you want to read a more detailed summary). I decided not to read the book myself because I was burned by RF Kuang after Babel. I did enjoy the first two books in the Poppy War trilogy, but thought the third book was a muddled mess in terms of character arcs and messaging. Babel made me suspect that RF Kuang has developed a bit of an ego after experiencing so much publishing success. And now, here we are.

I enjoyed Cindy's video about the book, and the point about RF Kuang's own financial privilege is an important one that even I didn't know. But something that I don't see enough people talking about is RF Kuang's privileged publishing journey, which for me calls into question just how much of an authority she can be on racism in publishing.

RF Kuang has had a charmed journey through publishing, especially for an author of color. The first book she queried, she landed an agent with it. She went on submission and sold her debut (I assume quickly) at auction to a Big 5 publisher in a "significant" deal (which means $251,000 to $499,000). Her debut may not have been a New York Times bestseller, but it sold very well and earned out its significant advance within a few months, if my memory serves me correctly. Every book deal of hers since then has been for a lot of money. Babel also sold in a "significant" deal. Yellowface alone sold in a "major" deal, which means $500,000 or more. This is the kind of success most authors in general, let alone authors of color, dream of.

Given all this, I just can't take RF Kuang seriously as an "expert" on racism in the publishing industry when she's never had to deal with the most significant gatekeeping authors of color face: difficulty landing an agent, selling a book to a publisher, and earning an adequate advance for our books.

So many authors of color struggle for years to get an agent. So many more have their first book, or even multiple books, die on submission. (I fall into both of these camps.) And even those authors of color who land a book deal are often paid peanuts and have to persevere for years before finally having their big break and being able to earn anywhere near livable advances (if they ever do).

My feeling from reading Babel and a few interviews is that RF Kuang thinks rather highly of her own intellect. It wouldn't surprise me if she assumes that whatever difficulties she may have faced in the industry constitute the worst, most racist experiences ever (including the experience of getting one-star reviews on Goodreads, which is just a majorly cringey attitude). I find that many authors who don't interact much with other authors fall into this insular view. In one interview, Kuang criticized the character of Athena Liu from Yellowface as someone who never uplifts other Asian American authors—and yet I don't recall ever seeing Kuang herself uplifting other Asian American authors, either.

I've seen some people who were awed by the fact that Kuang was able to publish this "exposé" on the publishing industry. But that itself is a marker of privilege. Kuang was already a bestseller; the industry was willing to take a risk on her that it would never do for an "unproven" author. And for crying out loud, do people really think the publishing industry would be hesitant to publish books "exposing" their secrets if they thought they could make a lot of money doing so? No one, for example, would be willing to publish a book from me that talks about the rejection I received from an editor who said "I already acquired another book about an Asian American protagonist [from a different Asian ethnicity]". Or the rejection I received from an agent who said it was "too much" that my protagonist was queer, Chinese, depressed, anxious, and autistic.

In general, I'm tired of financially privileged Chinese Americans being held up as evidence of how "diverse" the publishing industry is. (And I generally consider myself financially privileged, but some of these authors are on a different level—my parents didn't have enough money when I was young to take the family traveling all the time, for example, and I attended public schools.)

All right, here are my goals for the end of the year and for 2024:

1. Finish Novel #5.

This is my top priority for the near future, to draft and revise Novel #5 so I can jump into the querying trenches again. I'm not sure how long it will take, since my outline for the second half of Novel #5 is much vaguer than my outline for the first half. Ideally, I'd love to wrap this up in a few months, but we'll have to see. (I'll probably have a better idea after seeing how much progress I make during my 10-day work vacation/writing retreat.)

2. Manage my physical and mental health.

I've learned some hard lessons about managing my mental health in the publishing industry this year. I've had a bad mental health year, and I want to improve. I've learned that I can't count on traditional publishing for anything, and I can't just sit around waiting for things to happen. As difficult as it is, the best way to cope is to forget the book exists while I'm querying/on submission and to focus on other things. (Having a better agent who genuinely believes in my work would probably also help!) Since I've been out of the querying trenches for a while and querying is apparently harder than ever, I do want to work on managing my expectations and potential anxiety in case querying doesn't work out.

Because my mental health has been so bad this year (though also because I've been traumatized by the US healthcare system), I've put off addressing some physical health issues. I do want to use next year to address them. Maybe it's not the greatest idea to wait until Novel #5 is done to work on that, since I don't know how long it will take to finish Novel #5? But...that's just how I am. When I'm actively drafting a book, it's hard for me to focus on anything else.

3. Brainstorm and revise Novel #4.

This will be my project while I'm querying, since the only way I can cope with how much the publishing industry is out of my control is by focusing on something I can control. I still believe in the premise of Novel #4 as something hooky and commercial, I still think the characters are great and the worldbuilding is cool. If I revise it enough, I can use it to query in case Novel #5 dies in the query trenches, and it might be able to go on submission again.

But, on the topic of mental health again, I'm not going to push myself to work on anything else besides Novel #5 and Novel #4. (I'd probably be too mentally exhausted to work on something new, anyway.)

4. Other life stuff?

Every year I tell myself I'll start dating again, and every year I end up pushing it off. It's harder than ever to make this resolution since so much of 2024 is going to be up in the air due to finishing Novel #5 and querying. So...we'll see.


I never have reading goals, since I always just read as many books as I'm interested in in a year. But there are a lot of books I'm looking forward to reading next year, plus I recently got a NetGalley account so I'm excited to potentially read some ARCs.

Well...I know I previously said I would wait to leave my agent until I had a new book ready to query. As it turns out, our relationship very suddenly imploded. Even though I was very angry and hurt by an email she sent me, I tried to lay out my issues and point out that I'm concerned about our communications lately, deciding that I'd give her a chance to explain herself and see if she'll express any willingness to salvage the relationship.

And...she did not.

She said she was sorry for being unclear, but then proceeded to claim I misunderstood what she said, which felt like a defense instead of an apology. Plus, I still think it's unreasonable for her to act like "just because I told you three times that I thought UK submission was a bad idea doesn't mean I was trying to talk you out of it," or even if that truly wasn't her intention, there's no way she can't understand why I would come to that conclusion. Then she wildly misinterpreted something I said in an outrageously unreasonable way and didn't apologize for that at all. Her recent emails have generally felt like they were full of "polite professional-speak" without actually addressing my concerns or truly acknowledging why I might be hurt.

The consensus among my family and friends is that she's purposefully trying to obfuscate how she truly feels, and there's no way I'll ever know for sure what's going through her mind. Still, I'm neurodivergent and I obsess over people's behavior when I don't understand them, so here are the possible interpretations I came up with:

Scenario #1: Assuming that she wasn't completely lying and purposefully trying to mislead me, and that she was being honest this whole time (even though she backtracked on her position and didn't explain why): She is a terrible communicator (for someone who makes a living based on reading), but she cannot accept being challenged and refuses to take accountability for her own bad communication. If she had just said "I completely understand why you read my email that way and I sincerely apologize for not communicating clearly and causing you unnecessary anxiety because that was not what I meant" and said she was willing to discuss how she can improve communicating with me, she would have completely defused my hurt and anger.

In any case, the fact that she seemed unwilling to meet me in the middle feels like she was uninterested in retaining me as a client anyway.

Scenario #2: She was lying about everything the whole time. She didn't want to do UK submission and tried to persuade/manipulate me into dropping the idea; however, when I called her out on it, she tried to backtrack, for reasons I don't understand. My personal theory is that she didn't want to go on submission in the UK because she thought she couldn't earn much money (which would be a massive conflict of interest if true), and when I pointed out to her that UK publishers can offer six-figure deals, she didn't want to acknowledge that I was right and she had been wrong, but that motivated her to backtrack and tell me we could still do UK submission, even though by that point I said I wasn't interested.

She suggested we part ways as a way to get rid of me; however, when I said she brought that up out of nowhere, she again seemed to backtrack. One of my friends suggested she is extremely conflict-averse and was trying to make me happy even if it wasn't what she wanted to do, and also at the cost of communicating any coherent position. I'm not sure if I personally believe that, because even if she was conflict-avoidant, she should have accepted it when I said I was willing to drop UK submission instead of coming back and insisting we could still do it if I wanted to.

I am a very conflict-avoidant person*, and one of the primary ways I avoid conflict is by preemptively apologizing whenever I feel like someone else thinks I might have screwed up. Obviously each person is different, but I'm just not sure I believe that conflict avoidance was her primary motivation for communicating with me the way she did.

(*I'm conflict-avoidant unless/until I feel like conflict is inevitable; once I'm in the middle of a conflict, I can become incredibly aggressive in standing up for myself, and I've noticed that people don't receive that switch well. Sometimes, I suspect that people assume they can bully me into obedience because I usually seem mild-mannered and shy, and then they react badly when I stand my ground and call out their BS.)


All of this is to say, I didn't have the energy to want to argue with her further if she was going to continue sounding this defensive and not receptive to my hurt feelings. So...as of yesterday, I am now agentless again.

I did have to ask her to pull the remaining submissions for Novel #4 and write them off as a loss, but there's a possibility those editors were ghosting me, anyway.

I also have to buckle down and finish Novel #5 in order to query again (querying Novel #4 would be a risk since it's already been on submission to US publishers).

Based on my experience and also speaking with many other authors, no author—and this is even more true for authors who don't have a book deal yet—ever wants to be in the position of terminating with their agent and being back in the query trenches again. While many authors do land another agent, there are also authors who don't. But the industry is so opaque that agents can, quite frankly, get away with treating their clients poorly and authors have very little recourse.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, there are many factors that pushed me to leave my agent. When I look back, there are multiple subtle hints I can now see that make me think my agent prioritized how much money she could make over my desires, which is a massive conflict of interest. I didn't pick up on those red flags at the time, because it's not unusual for an agent to want to get as much money as possible for a client; however, if a client values things other than money, an agent shouldn't pressure them, either. When it looked like a publisher was going to make an offer on Novel #3, my agent sort of pushed me to want a multi-book deal and seemed upset when I said I only wanted a one-book deal. The way my agent easily gives up on my books after they don't sell after one round to all the major publishers now feels like she's no longer interested if she thinks she can't get a big commission. And again, that's a conflict of interest. Money is not the only factor to weigh when considering an offer from a publisher. I've even heard that some agents pressure their clients to take the highest offer if there is a multiple offer situation, even if the author wants to go with an editor with a better vision for their book, and that would be an absolute nightmare scenario to me.

I'm cynical, so I feel like that my agent could probably claim that we parted ways because I was being unreasonable. But I left the relationship because I was starting to get stressed by the idea of interacting with her. Because I don't want an agent who is defensive, who hides or lies about their motivations, who is unwilling to have open and honest discussions with me even if those discussions are difficult.

I want an agent who believes in my books enough to fight their hardest for them. I want an agent who understands that this is my career and I need to have the final decision-making authority on issues that affect my career. I want to have an agent I trust enough that we can have discussions about the industry, about difficult situations and how to strategize if my career isn't going well, instead of suspecting that they might want to persuade me to one course of action or another for their own reasons.

Fingers crossed that I'll be able to find my advocate next year.