WHY HAVE I...only submitted to three literary agents since finishing my book proposal in 2024?

A deep dive into my creative mindset.

Full disclosure: I wrote the title for this article and then picked my phone up to scroll for a good ten minutes because I was so reluctant to deep dive into it. This is a hard one for me to admit to and a hard one for me to delve into. After all, what does it say about me and my faith in my writing, my idea and the finished proposal if I can’t find the nerve to submit it?

For any of you who are new to my Substack, or are new paid subscribers (hello, and thank you for joining my small community!) - I have been writing a non-fiction book proposal on and off for about three or four years. In fact, it might be longer than that…I’m trying to think if I started it pre-covid or during. Anyway, it’s been a long time.

I joined Beth Kempton’s book proposal course (for non-fiction you don’t write the full book but a proposal - basically like a business plan for the book plus about the first three chapters) and eagerly began brainstorming ideas. But, despite coming up with an idea and expanding on it, I didn’t think it was strong enough so I didn’t finish it. The following year Beth gave me a heavy discount to join the online class again, which I accepted, and scrapped the initial idea I’d had (although it still had relevance) and developed the ideas that I’d been writing about online. My idea was all about creative confidence, how to push through the mindset that holds you back by figuring out what you’re scared of (basically what I’m doing in this article).

Again, I started off well, but again it all petered out. Until around 2023 when I decided enough was enough; I’m going to break down ALL the tasks I needed to do to get it done and work on it bit by bit. Bite by bite eats the elephant.

By summer 2024 it was finished. I sent it to a couple of friends who knew about writing for them to read, made a few changes, and it was ready for the literary agents. I sent it to my previous agent first, and whilst she was really happy to hear from me it wasn’t for her. Then I sent it to a second one - and I received the standard email rejection. The third one I haven’t even heard back from. They said on their website it can take three months - but it’s been well over that. I’ll take it as a no (obviously in my head it was so bad they didn’t think it was even worth a standard rejection email), but I will look into my notes to see if they say to follow up.

And that’s where I’ve got to. Years of work. Only to seemingly give up.

Why?

I think the answer lies in a number of related reasons so I’ll try and unravel my thoughts here.

Obviously I have no trouble writing online. Well, sometimes I do, and I did a lot earlier on, but now I basically write what I want to write whilst wearing my heart on my sleeve, give it a quick edit and polish then press the publish button. I do get a tiny bit of angst before I press publish but I’m so used to the feeling I barely notice it anymore.