Friday, April 30, 2010

At least it wasn't a form rejection


You may recall that I sent out three queries yesterday (that's six total; I know, I'm going slowly) and I received my first response a few minutes ago.

It was a personal note from the agent's assistant, which kind of sucks, although it's better than my three previous impersonal "form" rejections. He said the agent had evaluated my project and determined it didn't fit into their "current list," whatever in the hell that means.

But he was nice about it. And I got the impression that someone had actually read the query and the submitted pages.

Sigh. I know there are many very good published authors out there who were rejected dozens of times before they hit paydirt. And I'm certainly nowhere near giving up. But damn. What does a writer have to do to get an agent's attention? Stand on his head? Sheesh.

Oh well. It's Friday and the Cubs won. So life goes on.

One bummer, though. My lovely wife left this morning for a weekend Newspaper Guild conference in Cleveland. (I've been to a few Guild conferences in Cleveland and I am not envious of her. Trust me.) But I do miss her when she leaves, even for the weekend. Her flight is due in about 5:30 Sunday evening and the 12-year-old and I will be eagerly waiting with dinner fixed and on the table.

I think we're going to skip the family movie tonight, and opt instead for baseball on television and/or video games. Boys will be boys.

Have a great weekend. We'll talk again on Sunday.

7 comments:

  1. It only takes one yes. Keep plugging away.

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  2. Well, at least it was personal. Mine have all been form. And I've been doing this for 6 months. Don't sweat it. Start on the next book.

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  3. You can't complain until you've as many rejections as I do.

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  4. Not complaining, Christi. Just keeping track of the journey. And you and I both know that the reason you have more rejections than I do is simply because you started querying before I did.

    I'll catch you and likely pass you, since you're a much better writer than I am. I know this because I've been reading your stuff on your blog. You'll get there. I promise. :)

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  5. You know what, Terry? You and I should have a query race, see who can get the most rejections before landing an agent! I'm trying to put a positive spin on an otherwise crappy situation.

    At least a somewhat personalized rejection makes you feel better than the form type. Of the 6 agents who've said "thanks, but no thanks" (actually, it's only 4. Two of them were, no response = no, so I never officially got a rejection per say) the one I think most highly off was the one who responded by addressing the letter to ME, rather than "Dear Author".

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  6. I attended a writers conference this past weekend where a lady had queried her book "Control Issues" some obscene number of times over many months (over 100 +) and finally got picked up by Simun & Schuster. Never give up. Just make sure its not your query that's holding you back.

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    ReplyDelete