After my book deal, a lot of people reached out to ask me how I went about this entire journey: from writing to getting on the path to being published.
One of the initial steps in this journey for me was to get a literary agent. I wanted to partner with an agent who understood the industry and my aspirations, and guided me accordingly. Moreover, I wanted to get traditionally published which usually requires an agent.
HOW, IT ALL BEGAN…MANUSCRIPT I
I had always enjoyed reading and writing and being immersed in books. Throughout my teenage years and early twenties, I wrote short stories / articles and blogged.
Eventually in 2018, I began writing my first full length work of fiction, which was a romance novel. Even as I wrote that novel, I realized that something wasn’t quite working. Regardless, I wrote that entire story in bits and pieces, and that experience taught me something very important: I had it in me to complete an entire novel (~80,000 words). And I knew it was the start of something truly meaningful to me.
MY FIRST WRITING COURSE
I knew I had to learn more before attempting another novel, and decided to take a creative writing course. I quickly came across this amazing online course by the University of British Columbia called How to Write a Novel: Writing the Draft. I finished it over a few months and the course was absolutely instrumental in helping me understand the fundamentals of drafting, especially plotting, structure, dialogue, characters and scenes.
MANUSCRIPT II AND QUERYING
As I went through the course, I started working on my next novel. This was a romantic suspense and made me realize that I wanted to write more of suspense / thrillers. During the time that I worked on this novel, my husband and I also moved to Canada from India. Despite all the changes in our lives, I continued working on the novel and completed it in 2019 after which I spent almost a year revising / editing it.
I started researching literary agents and realized that querying agents entails a lot of work. I started work on my query letter and synopsis, both of which you need while querying in addition to your completed manuscript. I looked up agents who represented thriller / suspense novels, including some of my favourite novels and used QueryTracker and Publisher’s Marketplace to identify potential agents to query.
Querying requires an entire post (and I have that on my radar as well) but for now, below are some of the resources that I used over the years:
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing: An amazing podcast, newsletter and plethora of resources on the publishing industry.
Query Shark: A compilation of queries and I went through ALL of them.
Jane Friedman’s Resources: A very comprehensive guide on everything to do with querying, writing and getting published.
There are more specific steps that I took during querying that I will detail out separately in a later post.
FULL REQUESTS & SHELVING MANUSCRIPT II
If your query letter and first few pages capture an agent’s attention and they’re interested in reading more, they’ll ask for the full manuscript. Based on that, they’ll either decide to represent you or not. Now, getting a full manuscript request is a big deal and I remember when I got my first request ever. I was over the moon and ecstatic. Over the next few months, I got several full manuscript requests for this novel but eventually most agents ended up passing on it.
After querying for all of 2020 and part of 2021 and wracking up a lot of rejections, despite all the promising feedback, I realized that this novel was not going to get picked up by a literary agent. Querying had also burnt me out and I decided to take a break from writing. I was pregnant at that time and very low on energy. Managing my full-time job left me very tired. For most of 2021 I thought about writing, read a lot but didn’t work on anything concrete.
In retrospect, that break was everything that I’d needed at that time. Writing and putting yourself out there isn’t easy and I hadn’t realized how exhausted I was.
MANUSCRIPT III (THE ONE THAT GOT ME THE AGENT AND BOOK DEAL)
A few months after my daughter was born, I suddenly had an incessant urge to write one day during her nap. An idea had been brewing in my mind for some time now and suddenly all I wanted to do was put it on paper. That afternoon the first chapter of my third manuscript took shape. This was a thriller / suspense centered around motherhood.
I was hooked to the idea and for the next few weeks I wrote feverishly, postpartum emotions fuelling my drive. I didn’t particularly focus on plot or structure or other craft elements but I could tell that there was something different about how I wrote this manuscript. All the years I had spent learning about writing and reading books had helped me internalize some of the concepts and finally I was applying them.
I completed the first draft of NOT A GOOD MOTHER in about three months after which I spent most of 2022 revising and editing the manuscript. This time I relied deeply on my writing group and beta readers to help me fine tune the manuscript. In 2023 I started querying this novel and this time I started getting full requests very quickly.
THE TURNING POINT IN MY QUERYING JOURNEY
Even though I continued getting a steady stream of full manuscript requests, I didn’t get an offer from an agent for all of 2023. I did get a lot of good feedback which I actioned and used to further strengthen my manuscript. This was also when I started to immerse myself in the writing community. I applied for the scholarship to attend ThrillerFest, a premier conference for thriller authors in New York. And I also started submitting my novel to writing competitions.
I knew that something about this novel was working because three major things happened:
I was selected to be a scholarship recipient for ThrillerFest based on the first chapter of this novel
I was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger award, a highly prestigious award for emerging crime writers
I was runners-up for the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Crime Fiction Writers of Colour by Sisters in Crime
At this point I knew that I needed to keep going, despite rejections. I knew it in my heart that this novel was special to me.
Being shortlisted for awards helped me get the attention of literary agents and in September, 2024 I got my first offer of representation. And then finally in October 2024 I signed with my lovely agent Madeleine Milburn of Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency. I will never forget the wonderful email that I received from her when she told me how much she’d loved my manuscript and it will be one of the most surreal days of my life. I am a huge fan of the authors that Madeleine represents and it is a true dream come true to work with her.
Querying agents and signing with one was one of the hardest yet most fulfilling journeys that I have ever taken. To put your heart and soul into a work of creation and put it out there isn’t easy. But I kept going despite a full-time job, parenting, moving countries and so many other life events. Having a writing community, constantly wanting to improve and ultimately refusing to give up is what got me this far.
Now, the next question is how did I get my book deal? I’m going to detail out my submission experience in my next post (I was pregnant with my second child during that journey), so stay tuned! And let me know if you have any questions that you want me to address.
Querying and writing can get lonely sometimes, but don’t have to be. Reading about the experiences of other authors who have gone through the same journey always gave me hope and motivation, which is why I wanted to share my journey today.
So inspiring, wow! Huge congratulations!
Informative and inspiring!