Back in 2008, I was working on a young adult novel that I thought would be The One to Get Me Published. I poured months of work and sweat into it, convinced it was the best thing I’d ever written. When I began querying agents, I was told my writing was lovely, but…Oh yes, there was always a “but.” I reworked and rewrote the manuscript until it was almost unrecognizable. But still, there were no takers.

All hope wasn’t lost, however. In between all that toil on The One, I’d been working on other projects mostly to keep myself sane). And what do you know, one of them actually won an award. So I stared querying that project, suddenly convinced it would be The One To Get Me Published. When that second manuscript landed me an agent, I thought: We’re finally on our way!

Well, The (Second) One had some close calls and went through several revisions, but it’s still out on submission, nearly a year later. But you know what? All hope still wasn’t lost because I’d kept working on other projects, and I had more than one manuscript my agent could send out. So while The (Second) One was still making the rounds, another little manuscript snuck in and got itself a book deal!

So this is my advice to other writers who are desperate for The One: Keep writing. You never know which project will catch someone’s eye, and your writing will only get better the more projects you complete. Work hard, insanely hard, on The One, but also push yourself to work on other things, because you never really know which one will be The One.

Anna lives near Boston with her husband and their adorably insane black Lab. She’s represented by Ammi-Joan Paquette of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency. Anna’s debut novel, MY UN-FAIRY TALE LIFE, will be published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky in Fall 2011. You can visit her at http://www.annastan.com/.