Almost two months ago, I took an online class called, “How to Hook an Agent.” At the beginning of April, if you were paying attention, you may have recalled me stressing out about query letters or about how every other person in my class wanted to sell literature, and I had a superhero romance. Also, as I had not noted, I was the only one in the class with any experience trying to woo an agent.

The last class was a twenty-minute one-on-one with the agent teaching the class, where she would discuss any corrections made to the query as well as the requisite ten-page sample. The agent was incredibly positive about my book. She said there was a market for this kind of thing, and to avoid the label of romance because that’s a whole separate publishing industry that had its own rules and customs. She sent me a list of agents who were looking for work that was more fantastical.

After I explained the book to her a bit so that she might not have gotten from the sample and query, she asked me to send her more of the novel so she could get a feel for it. She told me up front that she probably wouldn’t be interested in it, so it’s not an agent query, but she might have some ideas for how I could better sell it, and she might even be able to give me a few names I can try to query.

I sent fifty-six pages to her about six weeks ago, and I haven’t heard back, and I don’t know what to do. She’s not a queried agent, and she’s not doing this for (potential) money, but as a favor to a student. I don’t even know how many students she’d done this with. Since she’s not a queried agent, then I shouldn’t be afraid of getting rejected. But if what I wrote was good, don’t you think she would have reacted to it by now? I know she loved the first ten pages, so what if the subsequent forty-six were a letdown, and she recommends I stop writing? She probably won’t do that. But I don’t know what to expect. I’ve gone from elation at her asking for more to trepidation at what she might say if I poke the bear.

I will probably write her, that much is clear, but what will I write? I don’t have the slightest clue. I keep getting blocked every time I think about it. And when do I reach out? I know that she will not write me unless I write her first, so what is a good time to allow to pass before I do write her?

This is why I went into self-publishing: it’s all on my schedule. Now I need to wait for someone else, and it’s making me a little crazy. I wish I could just write books and let other people worry about this stuff.