I am attempting to query and submit to agents and publishers again (and I'm a nervous wreck)

For the past several months, I have been on a dedicated and determined journey to try and land myself an agent — or, at the very least, gain interest from a publisher. While this is in part due to a variety of reasons, one of them is because I feel that my career as an indie author has grown stagnant.

And before we go any further: yes, I am well aware that people are still reading and buying my work. I see that reflected in my dashboards.

With that said: my journey to pitching to agents and publishers began roughly two years ago, when I started querying my new adult contemporary/paranormal novel Angel Hour and my young adult horror/dark fantasy novel What We Left Behind.

Angel Hour stalled out in part due to its rather [triggering] content (don’t look if you are in a bad space mentally.) What We Left Behind had some good feedback from publishers, but ultimately was passed on by the three I submitted it to (in part, I believe, because I was at a crossroads with it pre-editing process). I eventually decided to make it my reader magnet for my primary, writing updates only newsletter.

Since then, I have been actively working to submit two other novels to agents and publishers. One of those, I feel, is solid enough to stand that test, and is called Warsong. The other, which I wrote as part of my initially anticipated “year of standalones,” is called Arkady’s Suffering, whose last third I am still unsure about.

The original plan was to keep subbing Warsong until it got a bite from someone. However, after receiving some feedback from a “writing contest / open submission call,” I’ve felt like continuing to push it as hard as I have been is a bit… daunting, especially since I feel like it’ll need more work to truly succeed.

So… this is where I come to my crossroads, at which I stand with a pen in my hand and a bit of desperation in my other. I ask myself, Am I doing the right thing? Am I working on the right project?

The truth of the matter is that I’ve abandoned my year of standalones idea altogether in favor of writing a book 1 in an epic fantasy series (that I would like to make “very” epic, in the line of my Banished Legend series I wrote in my teens and early twenties). I am a little over 10K in, and while I am enjoying the process, I am hoping that it’ll be a strong enough book to catch an agent’s attention.

To summarize: I had an agent in my early twenties, but could not utilize her due to how out of control my bipolar disorder/combination illness was. I still feel regret over not being able to pitch a book with her.

But, I should add: I don’t even think I would’ve been well enough to pitch the first time around, but it also makes me question if I could endure it this time around.

So… you can see where I’m going with this.

In the end, I just want to stop worrying (as much) about the actual submission process and just keep writing. I know I have people who will read the work, and who will consume it, but at the same time, I see successes from peers in the YA community, and it makes me feel… not exactly sad, but remorseful, I guess? Over what I could have had, but have not been able to due to [whatever factors at hand.]

That’s my current dilemma as a writer — and while I know the feelings will pass, or at the very least, work themselves out, I cannot help but feel antsy over the throw this book at [X] amount of agents and hope it sticks process.