Managing \”The Call\” with a Literary Agent - Anoop Judge is the author of No Ordinary Thursday, The Awakening of Meena Rawat, and The Rummy Club, which won the Beverly Hills Book Award.

You’ve spent a year (or six) writing a 90, 000-word Adult fiction novel. You’ve poured sweat, love, and too much midnight oil into it—coming up with an original plot, fleshing out characters that are relatable and memorable, minding the pacing . . . Whew!

Then you dive into the querying process and the pain begins to kick in. You research agents like a forensic scientist. You submit queries like it’s a full-time job or depending on your approach, perhaps you submit to only a select few. And then, if your experience is anything like mine, wading through rejection letters becomes a second full-time job. The advice out there is you shouldn’t take it personally and you should develop a thick skin. Hah! Easier said than done—every rejection feels like some angry prophet’s judgment on your soul.

It’s hard to keep going, but you do. In my case, there were copious amounts of chocolate, wine, and tears—not always in that order.

You wait and wait, and one day your email pings with a request for a full manuscript.

And then you wait again. I’m a chronically impatient person, and although motherhood was supposed to imbue me with patience, it never did. Playing an endless cycle of the waiting game makes you question your writing abilities, makes you almost throw in the towel, and in my case, chew your nails down to nubs.

By now, you’re jittery as a junkie. After 150 rejections (but who’s counting?) you decide to let the manuscript eat its head off in a drawer, and start something new. That’s when your inbox pings with the magical words, “Can we talk?”

Click here to read the juicy details of “The Call” with my agent.