Ok…I admit it. My eyes welled up a little when I got the, “No, thank you” in my email this evening. I mean, I should have been glad. I didn’t have to wait three weeks to find out from this particular literary agent that she wasn’t interested in my book. But I wasn’t glad. I was sad.
Sad, because someone had just rejected me.
I'm not going to lie...rejection hurts!
I have been researching and rewriting my query letters for quite some time after an almost two year break between queries. I had gotten discouraged last time after only two attempts. I have to admit, to myself at least, that I was not ready before. The book had been written, the initial reviews were stellar, but the query was the absolute worst. So, after a lengthy break, I decided to pick myself up, dust myself off, and get back out there with another round of querying. After all, the first time I tried this I only sent out two queries. And what are the odds that I would be picked up after only two queries?
Slim to none, so I’ve been told.
So…as I was saying…I had done plenty of research this time and I finally felt as if I had come up with the right hook. My query was finally one that I could be proud of. So I went back to the drawing board and pulled out the most updated list of literary agents that would fit with what I had written, and I began researching exactly what they were looking for. Everyone had their own preferences as far as how the email was to be sent, and what was to be included. I read everything I could find, digging through their bios until I felt I knew them inside and out. Finally, I stared into the eyes of the agent in the grainy photograph and asked myself, “Is this my new agent?” If the answer was even a remote maybe, they would be getting a query letter from me. Finally, I tailored a query to the specific agents I was targeting and sent off a total of twelve query letters.
I knew I would be rejected by some, if not all of them, but I had read an article by a literary agent reassuring new writers that a rejection doesn’t mean they don’t like me…if just means they don’t like my writing. Or something to that effect.
Well, I hate to break it to you…but I have put my entire self into my writing. I have stayed up so late that it was already early by the time I went to bed, just to wake up a few hours later to start the cycle over again. I have sacrificed my health, my sanity, and my marriage to write. I AM my writing. So if you don’t like my writing…you don’t like me.
And I’m OK with that, mostly. It has taken me a long time to accept the fact that some people are just not meant to like me.
But that doesn’t mean someone else won’t fall in love with me at first read.
Didn’t someone say something about kissing a whole lot of frogs before finding a prince? Well, sign me up for the kissing booth, because I’m ready to find myself an agent!
Until the next time…I’ll be checking my email with a box of tissues!