Jacquelyn Dohoney

March 9, 2023

There’s nothing like querying a novel to make you feel like you’re back in school at the nerdy kids’ table praying for the cool kids to notice you and invite you over. (Yes that’s strangely specific because I was that kid). But after a conversation with my awesome tattoo artist husband, I have a different perspective that I want to share with you. Today’s blog is all about looking at the querying process as if it were a tattoo apprenticeship. After this conversation, not only am I looking at it differently, but with a much more positive outlook!

Now, you are probably asking yourself what the hell tattooing has to do with querying a novel, and I don’t blame you. On the face, they seem like two completely different industries. But let me explain to you why they’re more similar than different. 

Before you can even become a tattoo apprentice, you have to have some sort of a working portfolio to bring into a reputable studio and convince them that you’re worth taking the time to apprentice. A potential apprentice’s art portfolio is equivalent to that first draft of your novel. It has some kinks in it, but there’s definitely potential. Everyone comes in with a different level of skill. Some potential apprentice’s come in with art degrees, and some just have an appreciation for art but no formal experience in drawing. Maybe they have a few sketches but that’s it. Your first draft is the same. Maybe you have an MFA, or maybe you just woke up one day and decided to write whatever came into your head. The point is, we all start somewhere, just like a tattoo apprentice.

Ok, so you have your portfolio, now you want to bring it into studios. Bingo! You find one willing to give you that interview and hire you as an apprentice on a probationary basis. Now for the hard part. You have to make it through your probationary period. This is one of the hardest parts. Our studio still has a very old school apprenticeship. When I say they are not easy, I’m not exaggerating. Our apprentices work their asses off. They have long hours and very little time for social lives. When they sign on to work with us, we warn them of this. And if I’m being honest, the vast majority of probationary apprentices don’t make it through that probationary period. It’s hard work, so a lot of people give up. This is like that percentage of people they say who actually complete a novel. What is that percentage? Something like 3%? To put it in perspective, I would say maybe 30% of our apprentices DON’T give up during that probationary period. That’s far more than the amount of people that actually complete a single novel.

So what does an apprenticeship entail? If you thought we put a machine in their hand from the get go, you would be wrong. In fact, our apprenticeships are usually one to two years long, and they don’t even get to touch a machine to do set ups and breakdowns for months. They don’t get to use their own machines until they are on their way out of their apprenticeship. (And for the record, it’s a tattoo machine, not a tattoo gun. Guns are for shooting. Machines are for tattooing.) Our apprentices start out by learning customer service, answering the phones, and learning what key things to ask customers when they come in. We wouldn’t be anywhere without our customers, and this is the most important thing they learn in our apprenticeship. Our apprentices clean a lot and are responsible for opening and closing the studio as well as signing people in for their appointments and making sure our clients are of legal age to be tattooed or pierced. The same can be applied to your manuscript. When you start your writing journey, you learn as much as possible. You go to conventions, you read the craft books, you talk to other writers. You aren’t even near ready to query yet and it seems like you have SO MUCH WORK TO DO. You’re lucky if you even have a completed manuscript at this point.

The next step for our apprentices is to pass a series of progressively harder written tests until they get to their final test. The final test is hard, no ifs ands or buts about it. I know, because I’m the one that wrote all 304 questions for it. They have to pass with 80% or they have to do the test again another day. The purpose of these tests is to make sure they are proficient enough to know all the ins and outs of customer service, cleanliness, opening and closing the studio, answering phones, wet paint theory, and interacting with the artists. A lot of mistakes are made at this point, and the testing minimizes those mistakes. Once they are done with that final test, they can go on to get their blood borne pathogen certifications. This means they can finally go into the sterile room. And THAT means they can finally clean and sterilize the artists’ machine tubes and the piercing tools using the autoclaves. Have you ever sent off a query or first draft that you wish had never seen the light of day? I know I have. This process of testing is meant to avoid situations like that. The more knowledgeable they are, the fewer mistakes they make. 

Ok, so we fast forward a few months to over a year, and our sweet apprentices are armed with all the knowledge their brains can hold. They’ve run the front, opened and closed the studio, gotten the keys to the studio, learned their customer service, learned about sterilization, mastered using the autoclave, and done all of their drawing assignments (over and over and over again). They’re working on their flash sheets and get the heads up from the big boss himself (my awesome tattoo artist husband) that they get to pick up their own machine. Huzzah! This, my friends, is the equivalent of doing your final passes for your manuscript. Next step is sending it out to betas.

For our apprentices, this means they get to start on tattooing oranges and grapefruits. (We used to use pigskin, but honestly it just stinks too much). This is just so they can get a feel for the machine and pulling lines with it. Once they’ve grasped that concept, they move on to the fake arm. Every manager gives them a project to tattoo on the fake arm, and once they are done with those, they get to move on to tattooing themselves. Every single apprentice must tattoo themselves before tattooing anyone else. This is so they can feel what it’s like to be on skin (i.e. needle depth, stretching, etc.) and to feel what they are doing to their customers. This is just like sending your manuscript out to betas. You take all of their feedback, like our apprentices take their practice tattoo feedback, and use that knowledge for the final pass of your manuscript.

Ok, so our apprentice has finally made it. They are now allowed to tattoo people. They aren’t quite out of their apprenticeship, but they are well on their way. This is the time we start sending our queries out. Just like with coming out of a tattoo apprenticeship, we use this experience to see if we need to pivot. While they are working on making sure they are stretching skin, needles groupings, pulling straight lines or packing solid color, we writers are learning if we have the right comps, if we need to add more plot or stakes to our query, or if maybe we need to do another run through on our first pages or change our first line. 

And now comes the final stage. Our apprentices have so many hours of practice tattooing on real people, they are finally let loose. They can now tattoo paying customers, still as an apprentice, but they’re so close to being an artist they can taste it. This is where us writers are getting our partial and full requests. We’ve done all the research. We’ve done 85,000 revisions on our query and manuscript. Things are finally clicking into place. Our eye is on the prize!

And then, that joyous day comes. Management comes together to tell that apprentice they are officially an artist. It’s a party. Other artists are celebrating, the rest of the apprentices see that it really is possible, all of that hard work for the last couple of years is finally paying off. You’re a tattoo artist, baby! For us writers, this is the big big. WE FINALLY GOT THE CALL. Even better, that agent wants to sign with us! Oh happy day! We’re finally agented! And still, just like those baby tattooers, what we in the industry call tatter tots, this is a big deal. There’s still more work to do, but it’s the equivalent to being a debut author. They, just like us, still need to build our platform and still need to build our brand and of course, still need to work with our editor on our manuscript before it goes out on sub.

Oh yeah, there’s one more thing I forgot to tell you. During this whole process, the apprenticeship is just like a one to two year internship. What that usually means is UNPAID. In fact, we are one of very few studios that actually pay our apprentices. Which means they work their asses off (usually) for free. Just like we do when we are writing, revising, querying, and going on submission. We don’t get paid for that. Just like most apprenticeships. 

So that, my friends is how querying compares to a tattoo apprenticeship. Or, in my case, a piercing apprenticeship. It’s grueling work. There are days when you cry yourself to sleep and ask yourself why you continue doing it. You think you aren’t worth it. But the truth is, you are. Our studio has put out some of the best award winning artists in the state of Utah. Those of us who are unagented writers are still just tattoo apprentices working our way toward our big day. And soon, we’ll graduate from tattooing an orange to tattooing on skin.

Thanks for reading guys! Have any questions? Drop me a line!

-Jackie