Jennifer Jordan

I have been writing lately about how I am working to get my creative nonfiction manuscript Life in Flight published and out in the world. And now that I’m immersed in the publication process, I can see how easy it would be for a writer to feel lost once they have a manuscript that’s ready to go.

First off, I have spent so much time working on my content, and now that it’s ready to go, I feel too tired to learn a new skill.

Just made a very conscious decision to stay in my pajammies all day.

— Jennifer Jordan (@jenjordan.bsky.social) 2025-07-07T16:26:56.877Z

There are so many websites you can use to submit and track your agent queries. I was feeling anxious just looking at a couple of these sites. I am going to stick with one platform, Publisher’s Marketplace, because it has really good information about specific agents and their book deals. My plan is to write my query letters like I am sending them to actual people with real feelings. A query letter is something you send a literary agent when you are looking for representation. You need an agent if you want to try and publish a book with a bigger publishing house.

I’m at the point in my life where I can’t store any more information in my brain about how to navigate new websites and digital tools. (To the right, you will see brain cells that are likely more functional than my own.) So I am going to stick with Publisher’s Marketplace as my go-to resource (you have to pay $25 a month to access it). I am still learning the website’s search and filtering tools, but it has so much information. I will use this until I either find an agent, decide to submit my manuscript to a smaller press, or realize I’m doing everything all wrong.

To keep track of this process, I am making a spreadsheet to organize my query letter submissions. This article by Jane Friedman helped me create my spreadsheet categories.

Yesterday night, I revised my query letter and shortened it. Then I submitted it to another agent. Then I revised again today, and sent my query letter to four more agents. Right now, I have six query letters out.

Eventually, I think the query process will start to lose its exciting appeal, and it’ll be like submitting an essay or a poem to a literary journal. When I first started sending my work out twenty years ago, each submission felt momentous. And each rejection felt sharp.

For me, the act of submitting shorter pieces became methodical, and I generally feel nothing when my writing is rejected. I place the rejections in a folder on my computer and keep them just in case. I have even come to appreciate the nice rejection. Here’s an example of one:

Thank you for submitting again to _______. Though your essay
doesn’t meet our current needs, we appreciate the opportunity to consider
it for publication.
This is a nice, compelling bit of memoir that reads as though it’s part of
a larger work. We wish you the best of luck in placing it elsewhere and
with your book-length manuscript.
Sincerely,
The Editors

This rejection is actually kind of hopeful. You can tell the editor remembered me from a previous work they rejected 😂. Additionally, they can see a pattern emerging in my writing, that I am working toward a full-length manuscript. And they wish me luck! The only thing better than this would be an actual acceptance.

By the way, this story the editors rejected became a story I wrote for This American Life. In the future, I think my rejection letters could be helpful tools and examples to share when I teach creative writing. They can be fun to dissect.

Back to my current querying status, my plan right now is to stay in the present and keep plodding forward while I wade through this labyrinthine process. It’s a wild book world.