By 2017, I had finally emerged from early motherhood highs and lows—the bumpy nine months, the sleepless nights, the crawling stage, the walking stage, the germs stage and the what-the-hell-is-that stage. We were at the school stage. The darker days were behind, someone other than Feng or me was keeping Mark busy from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and I wanted to resume where I had left off.

See, in 2012, I was certainly planning to make love but not necessarily make a human being. I had just quit my job as an editor at Canada Post to take a break, try freelancing and finally work on my own projects.

My special trick is words. I wanted to do something with the story I had already written and the ones I had in mind.

But the pregnancy test—taken in Walmart’s bathroom, not my finest moment—was definitely positive and I was happy with that. One adventure at a time. Life was long enough to go back to writing… eventually.

And 2017 seemed like a good year for “eventually”.

I would have loved to coyly post a selfie with my own published book. But this time, I needed a kick in the butt. So I publicly admitted I had written a story and with this admission came expectations—what was I going to do with it?

I started looking for a publisher. I had to.

This is not the kind of story that ends with “and a week later, I signed a contract, see me at your nearest library next month for a meet-the-author event.”

I failed beautifully.

See, there’s a big difference between writing for no one in particular and hitting “publish” and getting published—it’s called querying.

Querying is a full-time job

It starts with listing potential publishers and agents and reading about them to make sure you’d be a good fit.

Then comes the dreaded query letter—just like a cover letter, except you have little or no relevant experience to show off and even fewer chances of being considered.

After that, you still have to introduce your work quickly, efficiently and exactly as specified.

Every publisher has different requirements, from font size to line spacing. Some want the full manuscript. Many just want the first ten, twenty or thirty pages. A few want it printed with a return envelope (encouraging, isn’t it?), others need this and that uploaded….

Basically, none of them “just” wants what you actually wrote. And all of them need the four or five paragraphs you’re about to spend entire days drafting—the publishing equivalent of a cover letter, complete with the genre you’re submitting under and the authors they publish that you love.

There are tons of said and unsaid rules

Ever heard of “sim subs”? That’s the first one I learned. Nothing to do with The Sims—it’s “simultaneous submissions,” i.e., sending the same manuscript to two publishers at the same time.

For many publishers, it’s a big no-no. A few reluctantly acknowledge it may be an option, but only if clearly stated in a separate note—“I may be cheating on you with someone else who has yet to acknowledge I exist, even though you don’t even know I exist yet either.”

It’s a weird dating scene, I’m telling you.

Time is measured in months or years

I’m still laughing at my first querying attempt. Picture me. I had spent hours on the perfect query letter and whatever miscellaneous documents the publisher was requiring. I hit send. I went to bed. And the next morning, I eagerly checked my email, half convinced one of the messages would have “Your New Contract” in the subject line.

I checked my email with the same enthusiasm the day after, then the next, then… I think I forgot the name of the publisher by day 93 but since I was playing by the rules, I had only submitted my manuscript to one, so I figured I had to wait for a reply to move on.

I don’t think I ever got one.

The second query was rejected—six months after I sent it.

This is when I realized publishers measured time differently. A month for you is an hour for them, so really, getting rejected six months later is a pretty good response time.

I think I received my last rejection during the pandemic—three years after the query.

Everyone finds you except an agent

I wasn’t “discovered” by any agent but they certainly made sure I’d be discovered by spammers. During my querying years, I was somehow added to some lists so I kept receiving dozens of irrelevant press releases—the same kind I translate—every day.

I was also contacted by shady publishers who just knew I could be on the bestseller list if only I’d pay a small editing fee of five million dollars.

Oh, and let’s not forget about being added to all these publishers’ newsletters and constantly getting emails about “amazing new authors”, none of them being you, of course.

Options are limited

At one point, when every Canadian publisher has had the chance to reject or ghost you, what do you do? Are you supposed to send query letters to the UK, the US, hell, to India?

The market is limited. There are only so many publishers. I never figured out what to do next, although I came to the conclusion that you can’t just try for a little while and give up. Apparently, you’re supposed to have several manuscripts—to multiply your chances of being “discovered” (or rejected, I guess).

But maybe you can give up. I know a thing or two about artists, having grown up in a family of artists. I know that getting your art front and centre (and selling it to pay the bills) or landing a role is a full-time job.

It’s a lifelong quest. It’s what I should have been doing instead of working and blogging.

I don’t eat ambition for breakfast and, like a dear friend of mine says, “I don’t need that in my life right now.”

Don’t feel the need to tell me so-and-so was eventually published at 105 because it’s okay, I’m okay.

It’s like life—I’m just here for the ride.

That said, I never actually deleted the manuscript… and maybe, just like some people dream of winning the lottery, I still dream that the right person will stumble across one of my stories and save me from the anonymous, brutal querying process.