A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR (but rejection still sucks)

Dragoncon is this weekend.

DRAGONCON IS THIS WEEKEND!

Holy crap I have a lot to do, so this will be pretty to the point.

I'm going to reiterate what has been said many times. Rejection sucks. It sucks big time. And it is hard to not take personally. I come pre-equipped to roll through it better than a lot of writers I know because I have an ego that takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'.....but, and you knew one was coming, when you query over 50 agents and they all come back as a no it can get kinda rough.
That's what happened to me. Wrote a book, queried widely, and got rejected widely.
And I thought I was going to set the world on fire with my manuscript.
But the rejections they kept coming. Over and over again. Some requests for more material that were then rejected but mostly the form rejection.
The copy and paste rejections.
I truly never want anyone to tell me how "publishing is a subjective business" or that their passing on my manuscript "isn't a reflection on your writing ability", or how they "only take on a few clients every year" (which always felt like "it's not you, it's me").
But there was one tiny glimmer of light in this morass of rejection.

I queried the Knight Agency. Twice. (See last weeks blog to read how I rewrote my first manuscript after reading THANKS BUT THIS ISN'T FOR US.)  When I queried them Sara Megibow was in charge of reading the queries and passing them to the other agents. I'm not sure if she was a full agent or not at the time. Doesn't matter. I sent in Deacon book one version on and got rejected. Read the book I told you about last week, revised, and resubmitted.

This time a request for the first 30 pages. Hell yeah.

They ultimately took another pass on the book BUT this time in a PS to the form rejection Sara took a moment to say that the writing had greatly improved and that she had enjoyed the changes I made and to keep querying.

That totally endeared her to my heart. It was a brief acknowledgement that I should keep going. I wasn't in danger of quitting, but I was getting disheartened at that point.

Now she is a full-on agent and I have since followed her on Twitter and I really like the cut of her jib as an agent. She seems to really get things done and to care about her client list. I have also since thanked her for her kind words back then and she was just as gracious in her response.

So that is the kindest rejection I have had.