There's a ton of advice out there for any writer planning to start querying. After trying and failing to find an agent for my first manuscript back in the before-times of 2019 I discovered that most of that advice is true some of the time. But there was one thing I never read anywhere that would have made the process much less nerve wracking:
Create a seperate email for queries, and only queries. This helps in a number of ways:
1. It's less cluttered to work in, since you aren't having to look past order confirmations and electric bills for replies from agents.
2. It saves you from seeing all the rejections (and there will be many) every time you check your email for some other reason.
3. It keeps your primary email off scam/spam lists.
4. You won't be constantly checking your phone every time you get a notification, hoping it's an agent replying. Because lord knows, we all check our phones way too much already.
5. If you get a request for a full right as you're checking out your friend's new dog pictures right before bed, good luck getting to sleep!
