Within a month of sending my first query for my YA fantasy novel, I’d received four offers of representation from literary agents. But that’s really not the whole picture.

When you’re a writer, you often only see other people’s successes—the full request, the agent signing, the book deal announcement. It’s easy to assume that those successes came out of nowhere, but in the majority of cases, that’s not true, and thinking that can be really damaging to aspiring writers.

So let’s take a look at how I really got here.

I had sent my very first query almost two and a half years before, for a project that very quickly died, because it turns out your very first novel is often not publishing-ready (who knew?!).

The second book I queried did get me an offer of representation, and I signed with a literary agent, but after about a year and a half together without selling anything (including a third book I’d written in the meantime), we parted.

That parting happened in September 2025. I was pretty depressed by it, as it felt like a step backwards. But the good news was that in July 2025, I’d finished drafting a new fantasy book. It was high concept, snappy, marketable. I wrote it in a fever dream of three weeks. It felt like something special. And my lovely beta readers agreed it was basically good to go.

So I assembled my team of writer friends to help me edit the query letter I’d written. By which I mean, one of them basically rewrote the whole thing for me, and made it so much better. I threw together a pitch to post on my Twitter to drum up hype, then after one final speedy round of edits, started querying about a week later.

And things started to move. I was pretty selective, only querying agents who were looking for my sort of novel, and who I was 100% sure I would actually sign with. I only sent out 31 queries total, and by the end I had received 14 full requests, almost a 50% hit rate.

I got my first offer a couple of weeks in, and I was over the moon. I notified all the other agents with my manuscript, set a deadline of a couple of weeks. My second offer came a few days later.

About a week later, I was watching a play which my friend at drama school was starring in. I turned my phone off for the duration of it. When we came out of the auditorium, I turned my phone on, and my heart stopped. Whilst I’d been watching the play, not one, but two further emails with offers of representation came in.

None of this felt real. I was so excited, but also stressed. I’d never really had to make a decision of this magnitude before, and I felt overwhelmed. In the end, I went with my gut, and the agent whose vision for the book most aligned with my own.

Almost four months later, I couldn’t be happier. It feels like things are still happening very fast—but I do think it’s important to remember that none of this truly came out of nowhere. Before this novel, I’d written four others. Adding the fragments of novels that I never finished, plus a few short stories, I’d probably written 500,000 words of fiction before I wrote the book that got me my incredible agent.

I also had so much support around me. The writing group I joined in 2024 had grown and expanded, and also seen a lot of success. I now had peers who had agents and book deals to help me at every stage. Add to that parents who were happy to act as my copyeditors and a super encouraging group of friends, and I count myself very lucky.

So, yes. Technically I got four offers of representation in a month, and hopefully I’ll have more good news to share very soon. Some of this success is pure luck, and a lot of it is the privileged, literate environment I’ve been raised in. But at least some of it is all the work I’ve put in over the years, those unseen hours I would never post on social media, the rejections I haven’t made public and the persistence to keep going anyway. It’s not as exciting as the clickbait title makes it out to be, but it is more honest.

Writing can be a whirlwind, a sprint, but it’s ultimately always going to be a long game. I feel like I’ve finally completed my first marathon. Now, I’m excited for what comes next.