Rejected.. Again!

So after anxiously awaiting word from an agent who'd asked for revisions (i.e. a major rewrite), I have officially received her rejection. Alas. It's disappointing and, like all rejections, a little depressing - despite some positive points in her email, including the phrases "you are such a talented writer" and "I am always open to reading your work again in the future."

(Reading that over again, I can see that's good stuff.)

Still, last night I turned to the Rejection Section of my favorite book about publishing (The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published) for consolation.

Here is an excerpt that could help a lot when you're down about rejection:

"Jane Austen, J.D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov. Name your favorite authors and you'll find a trail of rejections scattered behind them. So if the greatest writers have been bashed. pilloried, dismissed, railed upon and savaged, what makes you think it should be anything different for you?"

Good question. Throughout the chapter, there are various examples of best-selling authors who were rejected multiple times - I'm talking 27 times, 375 times, etc. And harshly! There's also a great paragraph in this chapter about how it's so much harder for humans to hear praise than rejection. I should pay attention to that, considering my own rejection did contain those positive points.

Besides taking advice from my favorite publishing book, I like to deal with rejection by sending the rejected piece out again right away. (And I do mean immediately, as in within a few hours.) So now, I have queries out to three more agents as well as two editors.

Hey, if they all reject it, that'll be only six rejections - apparently nothing to worry about if you consider Joe Quirk's story!

Rejection!

I just got a rejection email from an agent, and at first, I had this weird reaction. I didn't feel rejected. I felt more like I had gotten a bunch of suggestions for revisions that seemed hard and time-consuming and impossible to complete.

Now, reflecting on that feeling and rereading the email, I've realized something important. This is familiar territory. Even though it was technically a rejection, this agent gave me some suggestions, which means my reaction is up to me. I can view her rejection as a list of revisions instead. That means, I can do what I always do with revisions: Feel overwhelmed. Wait a few days to work on them. Then, start addressing each comment one at a time.

Even now, instead of feeling rejected or even overwhelmed, I'm getting excited. In a few days, these revisions won't seem so difficult to address. I'm pretty sure this is what it takes to succeed in this business: Just keep working!