The Daily Rejection

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Carleree

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I'm glad I can come here to bitch and moan. If I didn't see all you guys complaining about a lack of activity I'd be seriously wondering if my name was on the double-secret agent blacklist or something.

(trying out Carleree's technique, let's see if it works)
While you're at it, write a tell-all book about your friend's torrid teen adventures. Unless, of course, you were the guy in your friend's basement playing D & D till your eyes went square. In that case you should keep it to yourself
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I mean...Good luck!
 

Beckstah

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All crickets on my end, too. Awesometastic Agent was in touch the week before last to compliment me on my R&R and to tell me he'd be in touch sometime this week. Which probably does not mean this week, but I am happy nonetheless. Yay!
 

Drachen Jager

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Yes, I'm not sure how that memoir of killing a blue dragon with my +5 sword of vorpal flametongue would go over. Oprah might question whether it belongs in the 'non fiction' category.
 

pollymilton

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What I said:

Dear Ms. X:
I appreciated your work at “Getting Past the Gatekeeper” – but it
looks like you’ve had some big changes lately and congratulations on
that. If you really are a “cheese obsessed human”, then I hope you’ll
consider taking a look at “THE WEDDING THIEF”, which features a
Wisconsin dairy farm. Yes, yes it does.
 

Drachen Jager

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Josephine, born 8:30 am, 7 lb 10 oz. very mellow and relaxed little girl.
 

Beckstah

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Yay for baby Josephine! Congratulations!
 

LadyA

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Josephine, born 8:30 am, 7 lb 10 oz. very mellow and relaxed little girl.

:hooray: Congratulations, and jubilations, et cetera et cetera et ceteraaaaaa! :hooray:

In life, there aren't many Cliff Richard moments, but this is one - well done on your lovely little baby xx
 

A Girl In A Dress

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gonna break up the baby congrats here (BTW, CONGRATULATIONS DRACHEN JAGER!!! :) ) to share...

got an R today too. funny thing was that gmail showed it from "Sara," and my first response was "Sara who?" even though I sent the dang query out last night. guess neither of us made a big impression on the other.
 

pollymilton

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oh, she's such a doll. almost makes me want to have one more. ALMOST. Congratulations, again!
 

Hathor

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Oh, what a cutie!

My news...

NF down to 80,000 and reorganized. Good for me.

Found some new deer repellent for my garden. Even better. (I hate spending money on plants to see them eaten.)

And my husband doesn't have a brain tumor. The best. This isn't a joke. It was a small possibility. He had the MRI on Monday and finally had the doctor look at the results today. His brain is fine (which will probably make him insufferable now :)) He's such a geek -- asked the doctor if he saw any nano-bots in there. We went out tonight to our favorite restaurant to celebrate.
 

LadyA

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Got another form rejection last night. Why the forms, agents? I know you're all busy but I'd like something personal just once...
 

Hathor

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Seconded. So happy for you, Hathor. Especially about the word count. :D

Yeah, the hardest was waiting after the MRI for a time the doctor would look at the results.

Now I can hit up my husband for a favor at will. I've already asked him, "How much is it worth to you for me not to call your mom and tell her the good news about not having a brain tumor?" He responded, "Uh...what do you want? No, really." (Of course, he hadn't told her about the slight possibility. She would have gone nuts.)

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Word count looking good. This is -- ta da -- 30,000 from the draft I last queried. (Which was 20,000 down from the draft I first queried. An agent had said, "I'll look at it if you bring it down to 110,000 and change the footnotes to endnotes." I did, but she didn't. I thanked her anyway because the book was better.)

It wasn't just my own bloviating I took out. I've converted the book to be more tightly focused on my story, bringing in only the law and science necessary to understand it. I dropped all the general "here's what you need to know to deal with the school system" or extended policy discussions of what should change. The first is available in other books. As for the second... It's hard for me to accept but far more people are persuaded by stories than by citation of evidence or logical argument.

I actually tucked in a lot more little anecdotes or details, which was harder than cutting entire paragraghs or sections. A bunch of things happened to my family -- turning that into a coherent story line is the trick. I still have some cute stories, but haven't figured out how they would advance the narrative any.

I still need to comb through this thing line by line. I've done the big cuts and reorganized. I hit the excess wordiness by my standard use of "find" (-ly, very, that, etc.) and anything that jumped out at me. But there's still stuff in there, I'm sure. Yesterday I saw a sentence that made me cringe. I'm glad it was so far in the book I'm sure no agent ever saw it. :D

You know, maybe all that rejection I experienced was for the best. Now there is a nice, odd-numbered-day rationalization for you ;)

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Once again, I have baseball tickets when the Caps are having a playoff game. A fortuitous rain delay would be best. And no triple overtime loss, of course. I have no fingernails left after that last game.

If I had a New Jersey Devils shirt, I'd wear it today. We're playing the Phillies so their fans will be invading our stadium the way they always do. However, this year the team announced an "Our Park" initiative for this weekend. It's going to be crowded and loud. Too bad we aren't playing the Flyers, instead. That would be even wilder.
 

Carleree

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Got another form rejection last night. Why the forms, agents? I know you're all busy but I'd like something personal just once...
Personalized rejections on a query are very rare. I don't mind the forms, really. It's the non responders that irk me.

Sounds like you have everything in hand, Hathor. Go you! And blackmail your husband for everything you can. I would. Why else would God not give him a brain tumor?
 
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