First Rejection
Sunday, October 28th, 2007I 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.)
