Thursday, July 1st, 2010
(Also posted on Bark)
It’s summer, I don’t have to go back to full time teaching until the fall and in between the projects on my to do list for this time off (garden work that will never happen, filling out the paperwork for becoming an American citizen, brushing the dog, planning for lessons, watching bad TV) I thought I would do some writing. However, my motivation to put words on paper plummeted to the lowest low when Monday’s mail brought two rejection letters. Scott, Shira, and Sam have already “barked” on the subject and I don’t have anything to add other than that this video of Irish comedian Dylan Moran as the main character in the TV series Black Books reacting to a recent rejection letter cheered me up. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS1NOXWVWgo)
What do you do to cheer yourself up after one of these missives show up in your mail or inbox?
Posted in Humor, Rejections, Submissions & Queries | 2 Comments
Sunday, October 28th, 2007
I am officially a writer! I have received no less than two rejection letters, both from agents, and both very nice.
Considering that I have submitted my manuscript–each on the receiving person’s invitation–to three agents and one editor, I think two personal responses is a pretty good result. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m of course bummed that these are rejections, but if you talk to any published writer, they’ll tell you about the massive amounts of rejections they got before publishing.
I’m very proud of my two. One is from a senior agent at a big name house in New York. It’s a hand-written note starting: “This novel certainly has potential, however, it just isn’t right for me.” Now, maybe my writing sucks and the agent is just being nice, but I don’t care. I’ll take any encouragement where I find it.
The second was received via email and is from a small north-west agency that is highly respected by both writers and other agents that I mentioned their name to. My favorite quote from it is: “Your writing is quite good, although it could still use a bit of polish. It is better than 90% of the manuscripts I receive!” The email also includes specific examples of how I should polish specific sections. How’s that for great constructive advice!? It was worth my stamp just to receive that.
Okay, back to the grinding stone. I’m polishing the manuscript and sending out more queries.
(Moved from my old blog: http://writingvalkyrie.blogspot.com.)
Posted in Agents & Editors, Rejections, Submissions & Queries | Comments »
