All I want to draw is wizards and flowers

I haven't drawn anything for the past week and a bit. As much as I hate to say it, that comment on Discord really hurt my feelings. I know I shouldn't get upset, but damn did it completely destroy my motivation. It was like flicking off a switch.

Also, I mentioned a while ago that I signed up for an online art class, and it's not great. I'm starting to get a sense that skill at drawing is like skill at sports, by which I mean that this skill is its own type of intelligence that may not translate to, for example, verbal communication skills. Being able to present useful information in an engaging way - teaching, in other words - is definitely a skill that isn't inborn in anyone and necessitates tons of practice, so I can't blame the artist too much. Still, those videos depressed the hell out of me. Is the spark of creative talent truly so magical that there's no way of explaining what it is or how it works?

I'm not bitter so much as frustrated by my own inability to git gud at art. I think, in the end, you really need two things: community support and some sort of obsession. Community support is a simple matter of humans being social animals who receive energy from positive feedback, while obsession is a matter of being fixated on something deeply enough to put in hours of practice combined with the discipline necessary to hone your attention to detail as sharp as it can go.

I can't do anything about community support, but what I can do is figure out something to get obsessed about. I'm not feeling particularly passionate about anything at the moment, but I'm sure I can find something.

Query Letters

Former agency intern insights on querying!
https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/wwnacl/discussion_former_agency_intern_insights_on/

This will differ per the agency, but due to the volume, we were not required to read the whole letter. If we lost interest or the letter was poorly written, we could ditch at any time. Taking our 700 queries a month as an example, I probably tossed 150 of them BEFORE I even got to the blurb because a) the writing in the introductory paragraph was incomprehensible, b) the writer was a complete jerk (this happens so much more than you'd think), c) the writer had absolutely no confidence (woe is me, you'll hate this anyway, you'll never read this). Agents don't want to work with people who can't follow the rules. They also don't want to work with pity-partiers or egomaniacs. So those went to the trash before we even read the blurb. My advice: don't ruin your chances by writing a shitty opening paragraph. And get the agent's name right at least.

This is solid advice for all walks of life.

For what it's worth, I have two very good (I like to think) query letters for two novels that don't exist yet. I can sound like a professional while targeting the specific expertise of individual agents to explain what's unique, interesting, and marketable about my stories, I just... you know... need to write the actual novels.