Querying While Mentally Ill

Throes of Creation by Leonid Pasternak (source)

If you're a researcher, like me (I would call it a librarian failing, but honestly I was like this long before I signed up for my first LIS class), you'll approach every new step in the writing process with hours of reading under your belt. Before I started querying, I read every single post on Query Shark. I mean, every post. I read and watched everything I could find on how to write a query letter. That isn't even taking into account how to write a synopsis.

And because I read all of those articles and blog posts, and watched the videos, I knew that rejection is part of the process. Seriously, Google "rejection is part of the process fiction writing" and this is a sample of what you'll get:

How To Survive Rejection (sample quote: "they are proof that you are trying, that you are taking part in the process")
How to Handle Rejection of Your Writing, Without Becoming a Basket Case ("The point is, rejection is part of the process, one way or the other.")
Coping with Rejection ("Unfortunately, rejection is part of being a writer.")
Rejection: 3 Methods for Coping ("make that rejection a valuable part of the writing process.")

Most of the advice they give can be summed up as follows:

• Don't give up.
• Keep in mind that rejection is part of every writer's life, and it will be part of your life no matter how successful you get.
• Believe in your work even when no one else seems to do so.
• It's not personal. People connect or fail to connect to writing for different reasons at different times.

All good, solid advice, that I'm sure is very useful to those of us who have fully operational brains. In theory, it should be useful to those of us with wonky brains, too, and when I'm maintaining my depression and anxiety well, it is! But . . . as everyone with any sort of mental illness knows, it's usually a series of cycles, not a plateau with an occasional dip or two that can be quickly addressed with a medication adjustment. Worse, most of us can't mark off days on our calendar for "this will be a good week, this will be the one I have a hard time getting out of bed," etc., although with time we can often make some fairly accurate general predictions about certain times of year. *shakes fist at November*

So, when I'm having a bad dip, "Don't give up" turns into forcing myself to respond to my children's silliness with smiles and interest, not "send out another round of ten queries." "Keeping in mind that rejection is part of every writer's life" turns into fighting to not believe "rejection is my fate no matter what." "Believing in my work even when no one else seems to do so" is, well, impossible, since "feelings of worthlessness" are a major symptom of depression. And "it's not personal" is really unbelievable for the same reason. Of course it's personal when your self-worth is tied up in your work.

If you're like most authors, you have a lot of responsibilities outside of your writing. Speaking for myself, I'm in grad school, I'm the mother of six children ages 17-8, I'm president of my youngest two kids' school PTA, I'm treasurer of the city council of PTAs (don't be turned off by the PTA stuff, in both cases it was because literally no one else would do it), and I have an almost 19-year-old marriage that I value and want to maintain. I've chosen to number those responsibilities above "succeed as an author" on my to-do list because a book may or may not sell, but getting work and investing in my kids, their education, and my marriage are almost certainly going to give good returns. However, it's very difficult to maintain that perspective when the work you've poured years of sweat and tears into is being rejected over and over again.

Bearing that in mind, I've had to come up with coping strategies that don't necessarily follow advice on querying tactics (like "query ten agents per round") you'll see in most advice posts. They might slow down your progress in your career--in fact, they almost definitely will--but let's bear in mind that in the case of depression, it's quite literally your life they might be saving. With anxiety, it might allow you to make that vital phone call or pay the bill that must be settled rather than avoiding them. I'm sharing my ideas here in case they might help someone else with the same issues; like most writing advice, it's probably only applicable to 10% of the general writing population, so take what works and leave the rest for someone who can use it.

• Don't send a new round of queries when you're already feeling hopeless.  When the weeks stretch on, and you realize that it's once again either going to be a no-response-means-no or a graceful form letter, hopelessness can slide right into despair. Wait until you've got a week or two of mood stability before emailing the next group.
• Write something low-stakes. Another bit of advice for the querying process is "always be working on your next thing." I'd like to take that and modify it a bit for us. If you're into fanfiction, write something for your favorite pairing and put it up on AO3. If you're not, write a short story and put it on your tumblr or post it on your blog. Or, I don't know, research the habits of the common mole-rat and write a 6-page essay, which is probably relaxing to a certain breed of nerd *cough*yourstruly*cough*. You need to remember that you actually enjoy this thing. (And if you're so far down that you don't enjoy it at all, no matter what the circumstances, then it actually might be time to see your doctor, if you can.)
• Consider sending out fewer queries at a time than is usually recommended. The numbers I see are usually about 5-10 at once. This is of course coming from actually published authors who know what they're talking about, so I'm not saying it's bad advice by any means. If it's your priority to maintain your mental health enough to carry your responsibilities, though, and rejection sends you into a spiral, I recommend spreading out the damage. Two rejections over the course of six weeks is a lot less hurtful than 10, and you can comfort yourself looking at all the names on QueryTracker that don't have the red squiggle-mouth face next to them yet.
• Give up. Temporarily, that is. Hope maintenance is exhausting, and "hope deferred makes the heart sick," to quote an ancient saying. Give yourself permission to walk away for a couple of weeks until you have the energy to deal. Then come back to it. I don't care what any other advice has to say. There is no governing body, no Query Judiciary Branch, that will stand over you in judgment and pronounce you sanctioned for Doing It Wrong. The ghost of Publications Future will not visit you in the night. Take care of your psyche.
• Don't give up. On yourself, I mean. You can give up on your book, and honestly, there are times in every writer's life when you're going to have to look at something you created, with characters you truly love and want everyone else to love too, and put it in a box where no one else will ever see it. However, you are not your work. You are not your words. You are not your publishing status, or an agent's interest levels, or the brand you're trying to create for yourself. You are a valuable human being with a valuable point of view on the world and what happens in it. Your perspective is needed, because no one else can duplicate it. What you have to say is worthwhile, and so are you.