On Submission with Mackenzie Lee

If there's one thing that many aspiring writers have few clues about, it's the submission process. There are good reasons for that; authors aren't exactly encouraged to talk in detail about our own submission experiences, and - just like agent hunting - everyone's story is different. I managed to cobble together a few non-specific questions that some debut authors have agreed to answer (bless them). And so I bring you the submission interview series - Submission Hell - It's True. Yes, it's the SHIT.

Today's guest for the SHIT (Submission Hell, It's True) is Mackenzie Lee, fellow Katherine Tegen imprint sister and debut author of THIS MONSTROUS THING, a Frankenstein retelling set in 1818 Geneva, releasing in the fall of 2015.

How much did you know about the submission process before you were out on subs yourself?

Too much! Before THIS MONSTROUS THING, I had another book—the one that got me my agent—on submission, and it didn’t sell. So by the time THIS MONSTROUS THING went out, not only did I know what to expect, but I was already feeling frayed and anxious and sort of like a failure after that first unsuccessful round. I’m really starting this interview on a downer, aren’t I? 

Did anything about the process surprise you?

How quickly things happened! Since my first experience with submission mostly comprised of months and months of telling silence, I didn’t expect things to happen as quickly as they did, but three weeks after going out, I had an offer! Though it was still the longest three weeks of my life. (Also, if we’re being totally honest, I was surprised the book sold at all—I didn’t dare get my hopes up!)   

Did you research the editors you knew had your ms? Do you recommend doing that?

I did not, because I know myself, and I know that ‘research’ very quickly spirals into cyber stalking and anxiety attacks. I didn’t even ask my agent for the names of who she was submitting to because I knew I would haunt their twitter profiles, panicking every time their name showed up in my feed, even if all they were talking about was getting coffee—coffee to drink while they were reading my manuscript? Or coffee to pour all over my manuscript after they lit it on fire with hatred?!? 

The question of research is the sort that’s impossible to answer for anyone else because you just have to know yourself and your own breed of anxiety. If answers and facts make you feel more stable, by all means research. If they make you tear your hair out, stay away—you’ll be doing enough of that anyways. I also don’t know if there’s a whole lot of productive things you can learn from researching an editor, other than books they have worked on in the past, though that tells you very little about whether or not they will connect with yours. Everyone has such diverse tastes in what they read and love. 

What was the average amount of time it took to hear back from editors?

Exactly two weeks after the book went out on sub, I got an email from my agent, the first line of which was “things are going well ☺”. Which is an auspicious start. By then we had a few editors interested, and shortly after that, we had firm interest from the editor at Katherine Tegen who ended up acquiring it, and an offer came a few days later. Since we sold in the first round, it’s hard to say what was average. The only rule about submission seems to be that there are no rules, and no averages. Time is no indicator of what is going on with your book, so don’t take silence as a rejection. 

What do you think is the best way for an author out on submission to deal with the anxiety?

Oh man, if someone figures this out, will they please let me know? 

I struggle with bad anxiety—my mom likes to remind me that everyone has anxiety, but I know mine is a bit more extreme than “normal” and can be pretty crippling. I was a wreck while I was on sub—I actually worried myself sick and had a terrible cough for weeks after—and I had a really hard time accessing the rational part of my brain that held all the things I knew to be true, but couldn’t let myself believe (like silence does not equal rejection and not selling does not mean you are a terrible writer). So I used one of my favorite tactics for dealing with anxiety in general: I wrote myself letters from rational Mackenzi to crazy anxious Mackenzi. You can read one on my blog. It’s definitely goofy to write letters to yourself, but this helped me talk myself down and listen to that rational part of my brain. The art of surviving submission is finding a way to access your uncrazy side and let it speak to you. 

If you had any rejections, how did you deal with that emotionally? How did this kind of rejection compare to query rejections?

Submission rejection is different than query rejection because you have a wonderful filter called your agent. I knew I didn’t want to read rejections from editors since my confidence was shaky enough, so I asked my agent to only tell me if there was good news, or if there were pieces of feedback she was getting consistently. I didn’t want to hear every little thing every editor didn’t like about it, because I knew I would overcorrect and change everything anyone objected to in my manuscript, which is crazy. 

When my first book was on submission, this strategy worked really well—my agent took all the rejections and distilled them into balanced critiques for me. If there were things that kept coming up, or a big reason that editors weren’t connecting, she would tell me and we would revise. If the reasons were things beyond my control, or something only one editor had a problem with, I didn’t want to hear it. Maybe I’m a wimp, but my tenuous self-confidence needed no further blows. 

If you got feedback on a rejection, how did you process it? How do you compare processing an editor’s feedback as compared to a beta reader’s?

I think one of the hardest things about being a writer is learning what criticism to listen to. The simple fact is there are no right choices in writing, only different choices, and the choices you make for your novel will really work for some people and really not for others. But that doesn’t mean they are the wrong choices. Editors are editors for a reason—they obviously know what they’re talking about—but I think it’s important to understand that not all feedback you get while on submission is something you have to apply, or even something that would best serve your book. Another trick to using the feedback you get on submission is being sure you stay in touch with your book and the story you want to tell. Be sure any changes or adjustments you make really serve your vision for your manuscript and that you’re not just changing things out of desperation to you’re your book picked up. The goal is to find an editor who understands the heart and soul of your story, and wants to help you make that better. 

When you got your YES! how did that feel? How did you find out – email, telephone, smoke signal?

It was equal parts surreal and euphoric. My agent told me on a Friday that the book was going to acquisitions at Katherine Tegen Books and there was a chance they’d make an offer, but who knew how long that would take. I braced myself for a suffocating wait, but that Monday I got an email from my agent with the word NEWS!!!! in the subject line. Which I took to mean something good had happened, because only sadists use all caps to deliver bad news. I grabbed my phone, ran out of my office building (because I knew there was a chance I was either about to cry or cuss (spoiler alert: both of those things happened)) and out onto the street, which is where I called my agent and she told me we had an offer. I then spent the rest of the day getting absolutely nothing done except shaking and grinning and random bouts of happy crying. 

Did you have to wait a period of time before sharing your big news, because of details being ironed out? Was that difficult?

I told my immediate family and some of my close friends right after I got the news, but I had to wait a week before the announcement was official. And not to be dramatic, but it was the longest week of anyone’s life ever. I wanted to tell everyone! I wanted to scream it from the rooftops and buy a billboard with the words I SOLD MY NOVEL printed on it. It was very hard to wait, but I got such a supportive and congratulatory reaction when I finally did that it was worth the wait. The YA lit community is the best.

Skylar Dorset: Waiting For The Phone Call That Will Change Your Life

If there's one thing that many aspiring writers have few clues about, it's the submission process. There are good reasons for that; authors aren't exactly encouraged to talk in detail about our own submission experiences, and - just like agent hunting - everyone's story is different. I managed to cobble together a few non-specific questions that some debut authors have agreed to answer (bless them). And so I bring you the submission interview series - Submission Hell - It's True. Yes, it's the SHIT.

Today's guest for the SHIT is Skylar Dorset. Skylar’s first story was a tale of romantic intrigue involving two feuding factions of squirrels. Think “Romeo & Juliet” but with bushy tails and added espionage. She was seven. Since that time, Skylar’s head has been filled with lots of characters and lots of drama. She is delighted to be able to share some of it with all of you now, because, honestly, it was getting pretty loud and crowded in there. Skylar is a born-and-bred New Englander, which is why Boston was a natural setting for her debut novel, THE GIRL WHO NEVER WAS.

How much did you know about the submission process before you were out on subs yourself?

Absolutely nothing. Less than nothing.

Did anything about the process surprise you?

I think two things surprised me: (1) How long it ended up taking just to hear back from people; and (2) How helpless I felt during it. Like, frequently the feedback would be very nebulous and subjective and it was so frustrating to think that I had no idea what to do in response, that it just was a “this isn’t for me” thing. It’s like when you just don’t click on a first date or something, you know?

Did you research the editors you knew had your ms? Do you recommend doing that?

I didn’t research them, and I’m not sure I’d recommend that. Honestly, I didn’t feel like there was much *I* could do, one way or the other, at that particular point. I’m not sure if knowing stuff about the editors would have helped or would have just fed an unhealthy obsession with stuff that was going on that I couldn’t control.

What was the average amount of time it took to hear back from editors?

Hmm. This is a good question. I think a few weeks?

What do you think is the best way for an author out on submission to deal with the anxiety?

I kind of tried to ignore it. Like, it’s the kind of thing where the first day you’re like, “OMG! Maybe soon there’ll be a call that will change my life!” And then the second day you’re like, “Hmm, maybe soon there’ll be a call that will change my life.” And then by the third day I decided I had to stop thinking about it or I would go insane.

So I did other stuff. I know people say to write something new, and I did write new stuff, but I also just kind of enjoyed myself. I decided to try to learn to play the harp (still in process), I watched a lot of television, I taught myself how to use Tumblr. Really, anything that kept my head busy and not dwelling on the submission process. The querying process to get an agent is stressful in and of itself, so I feel like it’s possible my brain just really needed me to give it a break at that point.

If you had any rejections, how did you deal with that emotionally? How did this kind of rejection compare to query rejections?

I found the rejections at this point harder to deal with that than query rejections, I must confess. When you’re querying, everyone talks to you a lot about how many rejections you’re going to get, and so you go in bracing yourself. And then, once I got an agent, I think I thought it would be all smooth sailing from there. When it wasn’t, it took me a while to kind of digest it. I felt like I wasn’t well-prepared for it, so I will do my part and try to prepare all of you: There’ll be more rejection. It’ll hurt.

But, just like looking for an agent (or a significant other, I guess), you really only need one to click, and eventually it came. And I guess the way I dealt with it was to try to distract myself (see above). I kept telling myself that at least one person in the universe really believed in my writing—my agent—so we would find another one, too.

If you got feedback on a rejection, how did you process it? How do you compare processing an editor’s feedback as compared to a beta reader’s?

I always take all feedback seriously but I admit that sometimes I got editor’s feedback that I didn’t really know what to do with. With a beta reader, you’ve usually got a long-standing relationship with that person, so I think the feedback is easier for you to understand and digest and then incorporate. With feedback from editors, it’s often a one-time thing, so you just can’t get as good a feel for what it actually *means* for your book, you can’t probe into it.

That said, I eventually did edit my book pretty thoroughly in response to editor feedback, and I did have a better book afterward, so in the end I found the editor feedback really useful. Although I think I had to wait a little and synthesize the feedback together to get a clearer picture of it all.

When you got your YES! how did that feel? How did you find out – email, telephone, smoke signal?

This is actually a good question, but I feel like it’s all a blur now! I think it was an e-mail telling me there’d be a telephone call. But I really wish there had been a smoke signal! Now I feel it was all anticlimactic!

I was super-excited to get the YES! But I’m a lawyer by training so I have a tendency to not trust anything until the contract is signed. So I took a long time to actually *celebrate.* Then I went out for champagne.

Did you have to wait a period of time before sharing your big news, because of details being ironed out? Was that difficult?

I did have to wait a bit, but it wasn’t so difficult because, well, I cheated and told my family and closest friends, and that was really who I wanted to tell in the first place!

Jen Malone On Submission & The Waiting Part

If there's one thing that many aspiring writers have few clues about, it's the submission process. There are good reasons for that; authors aren't exactly encouraged to talk in detail about our own submission experiences, and - just like agent hunting - everyone's story is different. I managed to cobble together a few non-specific questions that some debut authors have agreed to answer (bless them). And so I bring you the submission interview series - Submission Hell - It's True. Yes, it's the SHIT.

Today's guest for the SHIT is Jen Malone, author of AT YOUR SERVICE, a contemporary MG coming from Simon & Schuster on August 26. Typically I cull down my visiting author's bio pages for a little blurby here on the blog, but Jen's bio is so awesome and hilarious that there is no picking and choosing that will do it justice. To learn more about Jen, sleeping in Spanish ATM booths during the running of the bulls, marrying the guy you made a fact at on the highway, and spending a some of your free time with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, visit her site. No, I didn't make any of that up. Neither did she. Now you understand why I couldn't possibly narrow down her bio.

How much did you know about the submission process before you were out on subs yourself?

I may or may not have stalked this site and others where authors talked about the sub process, and my agent, Holly Root, answered any questions I had about why she chose particular imprints/editors, so I probably knew as much as I could, though never enough☺

Did anything about the process surprise you?

I had somehow latched on to the idea that agents were the gatekeepers, so once you had one (aka: the gate was opened for you), it was only a matter of minutes before you could announce a book deal. So I think I was unprepared in that respect! That first book is now on a shelf, but I’m happy to have had the experience, weird as that sounds. I did learn a lot from the feedback: it helped me put future sub rounds in perspective and to really embrace how subjective it all is and also how many factors come into play from the publishing house’s perspective.

I perfectly understand why this is a dirty secret among authors, but I really do wish more would talk about “the book that didn’t sell” because my very unscientific polls indicate approximately 73% of us have that experience with our first sub rounds and I wish I’d known that going in so I could have adjusted my expectations accordingly! I was just at a SCBWI conference this weekend where uber-agent Jennifer Laughran described exactly that as, “sometimes the first book is like the first pancake and you have to throw it out to get to the better ones coming next.”

Did you research the editors you knew had your ms? Do you recommend doing that?

If more of them had an online presence for me to stalk, I would have definitely done it, because I’m obsessive about collecting information. But it certainly wouldn’t have changed anything one way or another. It’s not like they’re likely to tweet about the great submission on robotic dinosaurs in a love triangle they’re just dying to offer on! Most of them (or maybe this is just my editor?) are more likely to tweet about what they had for lunch! Publishing is like one giant trust exercise and I knew I was sooo new to all of it that I had to let go of this particular piece and accept that my agent is smart, talented, and, above all, has both of our interests at heart and would therefore be doing her best to put my manuscript in the right hands. The number of things she knows about the market and the intricacies of the politics at the different houses are staggering, so I bow to her sub lists. Which is not to say that I didn’t sometimes need her to repeat that to me over and over!

What was the average amount of time it took to hear back from editors?

Holly warned me that the no’s would come faster and not to be bummed out by that. It makes sense logically- if an editor likes something, he or she will typically have to get further reads from others in the office, then take it to an acquisitions meeting (which can get postponed whenever someone critical to the meeting is sick or someone is on vacation or on days the sky is blue or on days that end in Y…) so that process would take much longer than an editor reading and not falling head over heels. I was very fortunate that the first email pass Holly forwarded to me said something along the lines of “While not for me, I have no doubt you’re going to make a pile of money on this.” That was a nice first pass to get, even if it didn’t quite pan out that way! I also went on sub the day before Hurricane Sandy hit NYC (whoops!), so I’m not sure how delayed responses were from that upheaval, but I would say I started hearing back within three weeks, with the majority clustered between five weeks and three months.

What do you think is the best way for an author out on submission to deal with the anxiety?

Drink. Oh, is that not good advice? Everyone says, “Write the next book,” and I couldn’t agree more. If you’re excited about something new, your heart lets go (at least a tiny bit) of the previous project and you realize you don’t actually have all your eggs in one basket. HOWEVER. Being on sub can mess with your head and I found it hard to get momentum on something new because I was distracted and hopeful and irritable and (insert any other emotion here). Instead, I read. I tried to read books editors who had my manuscript had worked on so I could get a sense for the imprint or the editor’s tastes, but really anything that could hold my attention worked and reading always improves my writing, so it didn’t feel like “wasted time”. Next time I go on sub I’ll also ask Holly to only update me on passes on Fridays, because my iPhone was like a tiny bomb in my hand, poised to go off at any moment. Friday afternoons are a good time for bad news because the weekends are full of crazy running around with the family and serve as a great reminder that writing is only one part of my life!

If you had any rejections, how did you deal with that emotionally? How did this kind of rejection compare to query rejections?

If you had any rejections? Hahahahaha. Oh, you were serious. Okay, um, I would say it depended on the day. There were days (and passes) that rolled right off and others that stung a little bit. I got one while I was Christmas shopping and it killed my holiday spirit right there in the line to see Santa (note to self: why was I checking email then??) I do remember replying to Holly after she sent an early one to tell her how much I hated seeing her name pop up in my email because I knew it would be bad news. She responded back ten minutes later with a picture of a yawning lion or some similar variation of adorable and the subject line “Just so everything you get from me isn’t blah…” That helped remind me my agent was in my corner and wasn’t going to drop me over a pass or two! Compared to query rejections, these passes were both better and worse. Better because they often had lots of good feedback mixed with the “not for me” and worse because my dream was so close at that point and because my method of combatting a query pass was to immediately put a new query into the world to cancel the old one out, but sub rounds don’t typically work like that. I don’t exactly love not being in control of a situation- I’m very much a “take action” kind of person, so idle waiting is my kryptonite.

If you got feedback on a rejection, how did you process it? How do you compare processing an editor’s feedback as compared to a beta reader’s?

I love my beta readers to piece and they are super-smarty-pants, but editors evaluate manuscripts for a living AND do so from a marketplace standpoint as well as a “quality of writing” standpoint. I don’t think I’d last long in this business if I didn’t pay very close attention to their notes. Luckily, all of them were very kind (and kindly worded)!

When you got your YES! how did that feel? How did you find out – email, telephone, smoke signal?

I knew the acquisitions meeting was taking place that day and I was waiting by the phone for Holly to call. It felt shout-from-the-rooftops good, and also surreal! Mine was a bit different because I got the yes from a proposal that included a synopsis and the first fifty or so pages, versus a full manuscript, so immediately following the elation was, “Oh crap! I really, really hope I can write this manuscript… and write it well!” No pressure or anything!

Did you have to wait a period of time before sharing your big news, because of details being ironed out? Was that difficult?

I did indeed. It was forever (give or take a millennia). I think I had to wait two months, maybe? I certainly told my critique partners and family members, while swearing them to secrecy. I was also very excited when I got the okay to tell people in person at an SCBWI conference I was attending. And then the day the announcement ran was incredibly fun and put a really wonderful cap on the submission experience! It  really does only take one yes!!