Based in Austin, Texas, Mary Maeve McGeorge is a debut author whose work dissects the ways we deteriorate and blossom in the name of art. Her stories have won accolades from Writer’s Digest and Tulip Tree and have been featured in literary magazines such as Sunlight Press, Flora Fiction, Blue River Review, Visual Verse, Brown Bag Online, Heartland Society of Women and The Owl. She’s represented by Courtney Paganelli of Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency. Her debut novel, LOVERS & LEAVERS, is forthcoming from Putnam in spring 2028.

I am a success story. I sold my debut novel at auction to a big five publisher after a version of that manuscript received over 200 agent rejections. 

But I want to start this piece with a caveat: I don’t really know what I’m talking about. 

Breaking into the traditional publishing space is rare, one of the hardest things you can attempt to do as a writer. And because of the evolution of the profession, there’s countless think pieces on how you can do it, just by following these five steps. As authors, we have to put ourselves out there. Craft content, sell our story, sell our book. And so we use our success stories as proof points in the hopes that prospective readers might click and one day, buy our book. 

The truth is, however, that no one really knows what they’re talking about because each success story has nuance. I know what worked for me, but I don’t know what will work for you. 

It’s the same with motherhood. Nobody really knows what they’re talking about. There is so much advice about what you should or shouldn’t do, but the fact of the matter is, it’s your kid. And what will work for your kid won’t necessarily work for somebody else’s kid. 

You get where I’m going here. 

There is no step-by-step guide on how to sell your book at auction to a big five publisher. And if there is, don’t buy it. They’re lying. They don’t know how because there is no secret sauce. There are so many factors at play when going out on submission—timing, market trends, your literary agent, the quality of your work, your dream editor’s maternity leave. Luck! So much is out of your hands that it’s almost pointless to even try to define what will get your book sold because nobody, truthfully, knows a thing. 

However, I can sell you the mindset I adopted to get me where I am today. It’s easy. 

I gave up. 

I didn’t give up on writing. That has never been an option for me. But, I did give up on this book. 

My debut novel forthcoming from Putnam, Lovers & Leavers, was shelved twice, abandoned for three years, then resurrected with a completely new vision that allowed me to kill most of the original darlings in favor of the shape the story wanted to take. 

I wrote the first draft of this book when I was twenty-four years old. I was heartbroken over a boy and so, of course, I wrote a book. The story was pure fiction, but my emotions were so thoroughly embedded into that story that I thought every bit of it was made of gold. I remember when I first started querying, I was so confident that I was selling something nobody else had written. I had written an anti-love story. I had captured the college situationship in a way nobody else had captured before (except of course for my girl, Carola—she’s the gold standard). I was going to relate to so many girls who had gone through some version of the same thing. 

I sent the manuscript out. Got about twelve full requests, and almost a hundred rejections. 

My now agent rejected the full manuscript back then, though her rejection note was so thorough, I deemed it a revise and resubmit. I went back to “the drawing board” and revised the manuscript to fit her feedback. Six months later, I was back in the querying trenches and this time, I received mostly only rejections. Nobody wanted it. 

I looked at self-publishing the manuscript, convinced that there was merit in this book that everyone else had rejected before finally coming to the harsh conclusion that the book simply wasn’t good enough. And when it was, it would sell. That would be my baseline. I wouldn’t try to rush to publication just because I thought the story was good. I would listen to the rejections. 

I would give up. 

I remember telling my best friend that I had always envisioned this book launching my career as an author. That I didn’t know where I went from here. I remember grieving the story. I loved it. I had poured everything I had into it. I didn’t think I would be able to write a book as good as Lovers & Leavers. 

My best friend sat with me, grieved with me, and said that just because it wasn’t happening right now, didn’t mean this book was done. He told me to work on other things, and see what happened. Because life is funny that way, you never really know what the story is until you get to the ending. 

I took his advice. I shelved the manuscript. I wrote another book. Shelved that book. Sat in stillness for a minute, unsure where I went from there. I started writing another book, and then another one. I revisited the fantasy novel I wrote in college. 

And then, completely out of nowhere, years after I had given up, a new idea for Lovers & Leavers hit me. It was so good, so hook worthy, I started crying to my husband because I was so giddy about it (I’m like Kristen Bell—if I’m too sad or too excited, I’m crying). 

I hadn’t opened the Word document in over three years. I printed the manuscript. Read through it. 

Realized, actually, the book was complete shit. 

I recently interviewed my literary agent, Courtney Paganelli of Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency, on why she thinks it’s a good thing she rejected my manuscript twice before offering representation. She said that one of the most impactful things about the many ways I revised this manuscript was that I put in massive developmental changes, which meant that each version she saw was different. “You weren’t sending me superficial quick edits,” she said. “You took the feedback and the time to figure out how to implement it in a really meaningful way.” 

I agree with her that the manuscript is drastically different from what I had originally written, but that second time I submitted to her with what I’m calling the “revise and resubmit” version of the manuscript, the edits I made were superficial. I had revised it within months of her rejecting it, and I was responding to her feedback, hoping to shape the story into the mold she had presented just so I could get an agent. But the story itself hadn’t changed much. It might’ve been shinier, but the bones remained the same. I hadn’t really made any structural changes. 

When I read through the manuscript again after shelving it for three years, I was able to take it in as an unbiased writer. I could see how clunky the pacing was and how melodramatic the plot points were and just how young I was, when I had first written it. It was like reading a journal entry from my younger self, and knowing precisely what she was getting wrong. Knowing she needed to fail a bit before she could come to that realization herself. 

I’m not suggesting you take three years off your manuscript, but I am suggesting that if you are receiving nothing but rejections, it’s time to listen to them. Grieve the original version you sold yourself in your head so that when you do dive into revisions—if that’s the path you want to take—you’re ruthless about them. That’s the only way you can take a book from hundreds of rejections to a six figure book deal with a big five publisher, sold at auction in less than a month on submission.