Mistakes: I Can Has Made Them

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Phoebe 3865 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F2010%2F09%2F09%2Fmistakes-i-can-has-made-them%2FMistakes%3A+I+Can+Has+Made+Them2010-09-09+05%3A35%3A54Phoebehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F%3Fp%3D386

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, not in public, on a blog entry where people I hope to interact with in a professional context might see, but I’ve made some mistakes querying this round. Embarrassing gaffes! Things that have made me blush and shake my head! At myself, even!

If you read message boards and agent blogs, you can easily become terrified of making the smallest mistake. So much of it is out of your hands, so any part that you can control becomes overwhelmingly important.

I always get the same feeling while on a job search. Human resource webpages have similar advice, about how the smallest mistake will give a hiring committee reason to reject you. You must do everything perfectly, experts warn, or risk being unemployed forever.

The funny thing is, I made mistakes in my job searches, too. In my search for my first professional job, a typo sneaked into my cover letter. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything–I still got a job. During another, more recent search, I accidentally sent an interview thank you note to the wrong party (almost identical name, same department). That wasn’t acknowledged, either. And they offered me a job, too. Most of these mistakes were only realized in hindsight because I obsessively comb through my emails and files for mistakes, even when that kind of thing is out of my hands. I’m hard on myself–harder, I think, than anyone else is.

My first round querying, I had an extremely detailed, color-coded spreadsheet. The process was heartbreaking and nerve-wracking and I was a mess about the whole thing, so afraid of Making Mistakes (capital M, capital M) and screwing up my chances forever. Somehow, I thought Excel could get me through that.

I did okay on that first round (I had requests), but not great (no offers). Throwing in the towel wasn’t an easy decision, but I’m glad I went through the whole query rigmarole before taking this second stab at it. Rejection is a lot less personal now–it doesn’t hit quite as deep. I have distance from the process. I realize that if I don’t get an agent now, then it’s just a matter of persistence with future projects.

I’ve also, ironically, done better.

This time around, I’ve abandoned the spreadsheet to rely almost entirely on querytracker. It’s been better for me, more intuitive, but I wonder if the lack of stringent organization and ridiculously detailed color coding (seriously, guys, I used varying shades of colors to denote which materials were requested with queries, how many pages an agent asked for, and so on) has contributed to the few stupid mistakes I’ve made.

Although I’m sure my habit of 2 a.m. querying has something to do with it, too.

I’m not advocating that you make deliberate errors, or give up on proofreading. I am, however, saying that mistakes happen no matter how careful you are. I proofread. I grade student papers. It’s my job to recognize errors, but sometimes they still slip-through. If it’s true for me, I’m sure it’s true for the rest of you, right? Everyone makes mistakes!

So, for the sake of completeness, and because I always find these things comforting, here are the stupid missteps made during this round of querying:

• I pasted the wrong e-mail for one agent (agent A) into the recipient line for another (agent B), thereby sending agent A two queries (one with agent B’s name in the greeting), and agent B none. It took me like half a day to figure out precisely what had happened!
• I included a personalized paragraph meant for another agent on one query (I caught this one almost immediately, and sent a quick apology. I didn’t want her to think I was trying to trick her into believing we had a personal connection, which I’ve heard some authors do).
• I queried one agent twice.

The funny thing is that the few agents I’ve had contact with regarding these mistakes have been incredibly gracious about the whole thing. They don’t assume that I’m a terrible person for making these mistakes–always, deep down, my fear. Nor do they seem to think the worst of me, that I’m an uneducated writer with no idea what she’s doing. They’ve reacted like, well, people. Like they don’t expect authors to be perfect querybots who never stumble. That feels good–to remember that other people are rarely so hard on you as you are on yourself.

All of that being said, I still might cool it on the 2 a.m. queries.

How about the rest of you? Have you made any dumb errors while querying?