DUMELANG (Hello),
Interestingly, it’s been fairly easy to remember to change my date to 2025. Maybe it was just something that happened when I was in school, but I remember it taking a while to get used to writing the new year—January 2024...oops, January 2025.
I hope you’ve had, or are having, a wonderful holiday/festive season, wherever you are in the world. My year has started off at a steady pace. The children are back at school here in Florida after a two-week break, which struck the perfect balance of lazy days and just enough ambition to tackle the corners of our home hoarding things we no longer need. Enter: the packet of diapers hiding in the corner with the toys—never mind that the baby of the family is now a fully grown 5-year-old who sometimes skips washing his hands after using the toilet because playing is far too fun to waste a few seconds on hygiene! LOL, the joys.
Oh, and because I’m about to finish writing this almost pictureless newsletter, I’m going to stop here and insert the Christmas tree I’ve committed myself to enthusiastically decorating every year. The truth is, since I grew up with no tree, but rather with the joys of food, food, more food, and lots of family during Christmas, my festive season doesn't need a tree. But my children are not me, so here goes.
The other reason I’m here is to give you the much-anticipated update on the LitUp Agent round, which, as I mentioned in my previous newsletter, ran this past fall (or spring if you are in the southern hemisphere).
ALL MEN COMMAND PATIENCE, ALTHOUGH FEW BE WILLING TO PRACTICE IT — Aristotle
I won’t lie—I've been shown in the past two months that I am not always willing to practice patience. LOL! If I had a choice, I’d choose now, not later. But when I arrived on the other side of "later," I realized how much value there is in waiting. And yes, I eventually surrendered to it…eventually! LOL!
When the LitUp Agent window opened and agents received our manuscript packets, responses varied for each of us, the four fellows. While my fellow fellows (haha, I couldn’t escape the repetition) received responses quickly, I heard crickets as I waited—across the weekend, and finally, after several days, I received two requests for my manuscript. Phew!
But little did I know, this was truly going to be a lesson in waiting for me. While my co-fellows were already interviewing agents, time was ticking away, and still, nothing was happening on my end. Eventually, I received two more external requests for my manuscript. One of the valuable tips we were given is that getting an agent is subjective; you need to spread your net wide because you never know where your ideal agent might come from. And then...more crickets.
See where patience becomes demanding?
After some weeks of interviews, my co-fellows had the difficult task of choosing between agents—what’s their vision for my manuscript? Are they editorial enough? What do their clients say about them? How is their communication style? As they say, comparison is a joy stealer. While my ego longed for the same “problem” of having several agents to interview, I also realized that this step isn’t easy either.
At the end of two months of waiting, several rejections, and one full manuscript rejection, I took solace in the story of Abraham from the Bible—how he had to wait many years for the child he had hoped for. Through much prayer and meditation, I arrived at a place of acceptance for whatever journey lay ahead, trusting that God would work something out after I had done all I could: sending queries to all the agents I thought might be interested in my story.
OKAY, OKAY, AND THEN WHAT?
I apologize if this story is taking too long to get to the conclusion. Imagine how I felt. LOL!
In mid-December, just a week before the publishing industry closed for the holiday season, I received a pleasant (and nerve-wracking) email from Barbara Poelle (one of the two agents who had requested my manuscript through the LitUp program). She apologized for the delay and told me she would be reading my manuscript next. What!? I was excited but cautious after my share of rejections—about 10 over two months, which, in hindsight, isn’t the worst thing.
To make my nerves tighter, about three days later, Barbara emailed me again, saying she was enjoying the manuscript and would finish reading it in the next few days (her words were far more generous than my nervous heart could handle).
I called my husband, asking, “What am I supposed to do with this?” He responded, “It’s okay to get excited and be hopeful.” I had tried so hard to temper my expectations for self-preservation that I was reluctant to hope.
The next email from Barbara told me she had finished reading my manuscript and wanted to talk.
Fast forward to today—I am thrilled to share that I’ve signed with Word One Literary with Barbara Poelle as my agent! Yay!!
I am so thankful for the lesson in patience and the faith to not give up when it seemed like nothing was on the horizon. I am also deeply grateful to all the voices of support who’ve reminded me that, even if this journey doesn’t unfold exactly as I imagined, there is more to the story than I know.
That’s it for now! Thank you for bearing witness to my author journey. I hope you have an amazing 2025 and that you can bear bravely whatever lessons of patience may come your way.
