When to shelve it?

Hang on - you have a request for a full? You should send it.

How many queries have you actually sent?

Even if things don't go as planned for you - don't give up on it, yet. But it's perfectly ok to just trunk it for a little while. When you come back to it, you might well have one of those "aha!" moments and see some really obvious, fixable flaw. Or you might come up with a whole new idea in the meantime and draw on all the things you've learned, to make Next Book really wonderful.

Don't give up. Just - let it sleep for a while.

ETA: Just finishing a novel is something to celebrate. It really is! Well done, you

Seeing as you're under 50 posts, have you ever received feedback for your story or your query?

Are you working on another book? If you're querying one novel, you should always be working on the next one. Then if you do have to shelve it, you've got something else in the works.

For what it's worth, I queried six novels before I got an agent. Wrote six more before I sold one.

The lesson for me was this: Don't get attached to one project!

Heavens, a request for a full? Go for it. Even if you get turned down, you might get a critique that will help.

And even if it's turned down, don't give up on it, just set it aside to marinate. Like McCardey said. Or get some beta readers - you can request those here and it really helps. I'm right now reworking a novel that's 6 years old and has been in a trunk, as they say. But with what I've learned, it may be fixable. The same will happen to you.

Hang in there. This is a long row. Your skin will get tougher. Just remember - you did it, you wrote a whole novel. And it's probably just the beginning.

When to shelf shelve it?

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Fixed it for yew (Sorry, no intended snark, it's just driving me batshit seeing that in the thread title)

Wait... you have a request for a full??? What are you waiting for, woman? Send it! It might not be ready, it might not result in an offer, but it certainly won't benefit you one iota if you don't send it. And if you don't, you've burned your bridges with that agent anyway, so what have you got to lose?

Send it to the agent who requested it, and wait for his/her response. If the agent rejects you, don't sweat it. There's hundreds of agents out there both in the US, England, Australia and Canada. I'm sure one will pick your work up. And let's not talk about small publishing presses. Things aren't so bad, it's just a hurdle you have to overcome. It's all part of the publishing process. The key is not to give up.

It's adorable that your response to a request is to say "I might as well torch this..."

First of all, send that manuscript out to the agent requesting the full. Then you can determine if you're going to shelve the book.

And remember that shelving a project doesn't mean you're abandoning it forever. You might simply be waiting until you have the skill and experience to do the story justice. I think it's fairly common that writers try to be too ambitious early on in their careers.

Well, that was a mouth dropper . . . and the first good laugh I've had today!

A request for a full???

Well, don't stop at shelving that MS, get out the matches — quick before someone tries to publish the damn thing!

quianaa2001 said:

I'm sorry if this has already been posted.

*sigh*

I'm wondering if I should shelf my novel. Was wondering what people think is the point you should toss it out?

This is the second novel I've attempted but the first I've finished. I love the idea and see it having so much potential. But after countless queries, a pause to revise more, more queries and only one full request that I'm actually to scared to send; I'm wondering if I should just put it away.

I'm really crushed right now. I don't want to give up on my baby, that I had so many hopes and dreams for. But again I feel like I'm hitting a wall. :/

Ideas or advice?

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Queries mean nothing. The best novel ever written won't find a home if represented by a poor query. The question is how many times has the novel itself been rejected? If you haven't found a way to get the novel itself, or a partial, read by at least a dozen good agents, then the query is the problem, not the novel.

Are you sending along the first three to five pages with the query? Good first pages can salvage a poor query.

And when you get right down to it, I never give up on anything I write. Heinlein's Rules. I've sold things that were rejected over and over and over and over for years.

If you have to shelve it, don't give up. Come back to it at a later point - a year or so - and see what you can make of it. You could change it and turn into something different and better.

I wrote my first novel at 18, shelved it and came back to it 4 years later and now I'm turning it into something I actually like. And if it still gets rejected, I'll finish the trilogy because I really want to.

When I get in this mind-set, I reconcile myself with something I read in Stephen King's On Writing....

(Paraphrasing here...) He said that when he first started submitting short stories as a young teenager, he was flooded with rejection letters and editorial "suggestions". He was crushed for a moment before he reminded himself that not one letter had said "Never write again, this is not for you." They said "edit and resubmit."

He kept all of those rejection letters tacked onto nails in the wall above his writing desk so that he could always see them and think about the things he'd learned from each rejection. They didn't make him shelve anything. They made him try harder and push on, because even if they couldn't see it yet, he knew that the stories he was sending were solid gold.

If it worked for one of the most successful authors of our day and age, it works for me. I personally have never entirely shelved anything. I go back over it periodically, even if I haven't been able to write that story in forever.

Sometimes something in that 'limbo story' suddenly adds up and I can do some work on it. Sometimes two stories I was stuck on seem more like two parts of a whole and suddenly there's progress I'd never expected. Other times I see something in one of them that inspires something back on a more active WIP. The possibilities are endless, so don't discard an idea that seems to have run its course, maybe you're just not ready to finish the tale yet.

First time I ever heard of a writer thinking about shelving a book which got a full request. Methinks you've got to be kidding.

jaksen said:

First time I ever heard of a writer thinking about shelving a book which got a full request. Methinks you've got to be kidding.

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Lol...

it's not that far-fetched.

(which is to say that I've had similar thoughts, not that said thoughts are rational, just to clarify)

jaksen said:

First time I ever heard of a writer thinking about shelving a book which got a full request. Methinks you've got to be kidding.

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Rejections on fulls can be extremely discouraging. You can't kid yourself into thinking your problem was a bad query.

Jamesaritchie said:

Rejections on fulls can be extremely discouraging. You can't kid yourself into thinking your problem was a bad query.

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The OP didn't say the full was rejected. She said she was afraid to send it.

quianaa2001 said:

Ack! Sorry about the spelling! >.<

Also thanks everyone. Your words are helpful.

I guess I might as well send it... *deep breath*

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Please do. If you don't, there's always going to be a part of you that wonders "what if". In the event it's rejected, take solace in the fact that you tried and use it as motivation to improve.

WriteMinded said:

The OP didn't say the full was rejected. She said she was afraid to send it.

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Ah, I see. But I also see even more reason why she wants to shelve it. For many, ear of rejection is even stronger than rejection itself.

Jamesaritchie said:

Ah, I see. But I also see even more reason why she wants to shelve it. For many, ear of rejection is even stronger than rejection itself.

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Yep. And then there's fear of success.

quianaa2001 said:

You are all right. I have a total fear or success and of rejection. I'm just thinking I just move on. I've taken sooo long trying to decide to send the full off or not after I found it lurking buried in my email. Such time has lapsed I'm just like why would they want my junk now? :/

*sigh*

This is a big problem with me, I just may be overthinking it.

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Here's a trick I used when I was querying.

Compose the email. Tell yourself you're not going to send it. Save it as a draft.

Get the copy of your manuscript together. Verify that it fits what the agency is asking for - type face, spacing, header/footer info, that sort of thing. Attach the copy of the manuscript to the email.

Tell yourself you're going to save it as a draft. But - just on impulse, mind you - go ahead and click "Send." After all, the hard part is done. One click is easy.

By the time you realize OH MY GOD I SENT IT, it's gone and you can't have it back. And you might as well let go of the anxiety, because it's entirely out of your hands.

Sounds wacky, doesn't it? But it worked for me. I found querying absolutely terrifying, for no logical reason whatsoever. I found I could apply logic long enough to compose my emails, but not long enough to actually send them, so I did it in two stages.

Send the full. If you don't, you will always wonder.