The Dreaded “Maybe” Pile

Querying sucks.

And not just because of all the rejection, even though every rejection is another blow to the confidence I thought I had in my writing.

But that’s not the worse part—the worst for me is the weeks-long silence from the drag-it-out “maybe” piles.

“Maybe” piles are exactly what they sound like: You’ve caught the agent’s attention, but they haven’t decided whether they want to request further pages from you, and so they place you in their “maybe” pile, where you live for weeks, or sometimes months, until they make up their mind.

It’s something I’ve never really understood. A swarmed agent might need three months or more to get to my submission, but why does he or she or they need another three months to decide whether it’s something they’d like to pursue? They either want to read more or they don’t.

The longest “maybe” pile I was in was 84 days. I knew I was in this agent’s “maybe” pile because all the other submissions around mine were rejected (thanks QueryTracker!), plus my manuscript checked all the boxes on the agent’s wishlist. Now I know that a book checking all or most of the boxes on an MSWL means nothing. Sometimes a book can be exactly what an agent is looking for and still get shot down, but after weeks of hoping I’d be moved from “maybe” to “full request,” I couldn’t help but think, “What the Hell is taking so long? Just make a decision already!”

And if you’re wondering if this agent has, no, they still haven’t, so I’ve taken the liberty of moving myself from the “maybe” pile down the street to the CNR crew—closed, no response.

It’s a big move. A big, frustrating move. First, you’re feeling good because all the signs point to a possible full request. Then the next thing you know, you’re packing it up, completely confused by the fact that you were so close but, in the end, it turned out that you weren’t even worthy of a simple form rejection.

Ouch!

I don’t know about other querying writers, but I’d rather be killed swiftly and surely, than be stuck in the “maybe” pile, slowly bleeding out.