A brief pause in querying

I was interviewing a successful businessman last week for a series of freelance articles I am doing. And one of my favorite quotes from him was, "You can't just hope for things to happen."

I'm sure that's one of the reasons he is successful because he has faced -- and continues to face -- serious challenges. He owns an auto dealership, and it's a Chrysler dealership, to boot. And he is a minority. But he is doing well and is quite successful.

I have been so busy with this freelance project that I haven't spent as much time as I'd like researching agents and querying them. In fact, I haven't sent a single query in about two weeks. Now that's sad.

(I have gotten one more rejection from the last batch I sent out last month.)

Though he was talking about success in general and not about me -- he knows nothing of my aspirations of being published -- this businessman reminded me that complacency can quickly set it -- that merely hoping for an agent can take over for actually doing the work at finding an agent.

Merely hoping isn't taking over in me but I know I can backslide. So while I still have a busy week, I will get more queries out this week. I still have a list of about 10 or 12 agents I really like but haven't tried to contact yet. Plus there are more out there I haven't even discovered yet.

The query is done. Time for it to start flying -- but only a handful at a time, of course.

Thanks for reading and don't ever give up.