The Joy of Querying . . .
. . . A facetious title for a hellish process that is more accurately described using terms such as “torturous,” “nauseating,” “mind-boggling,” etc. That said, I think that my rather unique perspective as someone who has spent an entire lifetime getting rejected may help some people who are getting hung up on the querying process. Why have I spent so long getting rejected? Keep the snide remarks to yourself, people . . . the official reason is that I’m an Academic. Which means that I have spent every year since I was seventeen putting myself out there only to get rejected. College applications? Rejections! Grad school applications? Rejections! Big Time Scholarship applications? Rejections! (Damn you, Cecil Rhodes!) Then came the mother load of rejections: The Academic Job Market. Being an academic SUCKS. Don’t let the fact that we never apparently do any actual work fool you. The reason we spend so much time not evidently working is because we’re busy trying to heal the fest...