The Daily Rejection

Rejection on a full.

Taken with the premise, but didn't love the characters.

Lady I'm not asking you to marry them!



Bad timing, I need more sleep. They don't sting quite so badly when I'm well rested.

Boo hiss

Sorry about the R, DJ. Try to sleep. I know, easy for me to say.

Thanks for not watching the game, Carleree. I assume that's what happened The guy in front of me at the BB game was a Sabres fan. I never realized how much they hate the Rangers.

Drachen Jager said:

Rejection on a full.

Taken with the premise, but didn't love the characters.

Lady I'm not asking you to marry them!



Bad timing, I need more sleep. They don't sting quite so badly when I'm well rested.

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Yeah, I'd love to penetrate agentspeak at times.


got a fab this, fab that, excellent such n such, compelling whatyemecallit, but em, no.


still, i like to tell myself a no with compliments is really a




NO!!!!

Yep. No matter how much they want to dress it up in kindness and sparkles, it's still 'No'.

Agreed.

Yeah, dressing up "NO" with a metaphor or simili ain't gonna change it a bit. It still means...well, you know...

Got a really weird rejection comment from one of the big Six and it's thrown me. I'd ask my agent but it takes her a long time to respond.

"You must remember that your characters must be grounded in the world," said the hot-shot editor.

Uh, WTF, sez me. It's a YA fantasy, where the kids start out in a normal neighborhood-community, then have a sleepover. Well, an ancient dream catcher in the bedroom is filled to the brink with very nasty nightmares, and between the four kids who manage to have some pretty terrible sleeping thoughts, the dream catcher implodes and sucks the kids into a different realm (a web world), where the nightmares are alive and on a rampage. Plot = Kids have to escape this realm, dealing with all kinds of nasty mythological beasts.

So, I assume that my kids have to be "grounded" in this fantasy/nightmare realm. Does this mean it must be authentic or very realistic to them? Must it make more sense than it does? They start out in the normal world then make the transition to the dream catcher world. Where am I supposed to be grounded--which world?

I'm a little confused by this--never had a comment like this before.

Tri

That is a bizarre comment, tri. One would hope someone whose job is to make writing clear, meaningful, and unambiguous could, you know, write that way personally.

Tri, that's like Steve Martin's quote: "Always....wait. Never..."

Tri, I think what she may be getting at is that they should have 'real world' aspects. I think a good series to look at where characters go from Earth to a fantasy setting, but retain their grounding is Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry series. There were many things I did not like about the books, but the characters always held true to their roots. That might be worth a read.

Congrats on the beautiful baby!!!

Thanks, guys. It's a mystery, no doubt. But I think (guess) what she might be getting at is that the kids readily, or too easily, accept this very bizarre fantasy world without emotionally puzzling over it (or trying to make sense of it). Once they enter the fantasy realm, this sets up a concrete dividing line between what they've known all their lives and this world that doesn't make a bit of sense. Clearly they're grounded in their old familiar world, and are only unfortunate visitors to the new one.

Or something like that. Jeeze. This is the type of vague comment that prompts you to beat yourself over your head until silly. I'm gonna let it go to the cornfield.

I didn't get any rejections Friday, but I did get one today. I've only gotten form rejections so far in this round, but a lot of them are from agencies/agents who don't guarantee a response or have a "silence means no" policy. So at least I'm getting an answer and not having to sit around wondering if my e-mail actually went through.

I don't have anything to report. My dream agent has been handing out form Rs on full submissions like she's passing out Halloween candy this week. I'm on pins and needles. The last one she rejected submitted a few days before me.

might have to set up an Agentspeak thread.


'grounded' is one of my fav's, seen it here and there.

ah, so many, so many. (I used to be in the critter biz, way back when)


'texture' is another fave.

It aint easy, though I do find simplicity to be the best.

Damn you, liberal arts colleges!!!!


Godot be with the 'this won't sell' or 'your plot frizzles up and dies half way through' or 'you got lazy and didn't world build enough' or 'your characters are one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs with as much life and originality as Conan O'Brien's one-liners' or 'this is a complete rip-off of xxxx' or well, so many...


so many....

I got a rejection from an agent I'd queried 5 months ago. Really it took you 5 months to send a form rejection? *shakes head*
It doesn't bother me but that's a long time and I'd already written them off as a no response/closed off.

5 months? lol. try 11months. aint no thang.
least you didnt get agentspeaked!

(em, any agents reading, i love you all. honest)

Carleree said:

I don't have anything to report. My dream agent has been handing out form Rs on full submissions like she's passing out Halloween candy this week. I'm on pins and needles. The last one she rejected submitted a few days before me.

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VM? I got one from her. I think she did a major purge on Saturday. Can't have read more than a page or two at the rate she was rejecting.

Smiley0501 said:

I got a rejection from an agent I'd queried 5 months ago. Really it took you 5 months to send a form rejection? *shakes head*
It doesn't bother me but that's a long time and I'd already written them off as a no response/closed off.

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That's nothing. I got a request after 18 months once. I just shrugged and ignored it, anyone that incompetent isn't worth my time.

My second agent used to hammer me with "stilted" a lot. It always happened after I'd read a whole bunch of King and then decided to write in my book, picking up where I'd left off.

My agent was beside himself. "Chris, what in the hell happened to your prose--you're over the top--running on and on and on and on...."

I stop reading King during my writing gigs. Was not good for me.

itsmary said:

I didn't get any rejections Friday, but I did get one today. I've only gotten form rejections so far in this round, but a lot of them are from agencies/agents who don't guarantee a response or have a "silence means no" policy. So at least I'm getting an answer and not having to sit around wondering if my e-mail actually went through.

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That's the way to be positive!

Sorry for folks' Rs.

I like the AgentSpeak idea.

Carleree, I hope you hear soon. One, I want good news for you. Two, I suspect to take your mind off things you tuned into the Caps game last night. At the end...when the Rangers tied with 6.6 seconds left. That was you, right?

I'm at the point of reading the revamped version of the NF aloud. But it's an even-numbered day. Perhaps I should do something else. Let's see, a spanking new query for it. "Hey, agent, remember me? I'm back. The book doesn't suck anymore. Or, at least, it's much shorter!"

I hope I hear from my last beta on my fiction soon. A few tweaks and I think I'll be ready to query. But I can't nudge her. The poor woman's computer went kerflooey and took her own uncompleted book with it. (Backup, people, backup!) I hope my prose stylings didn't cause her computer to commit seppuku.

My kidlets are very sick. Again. I spent the day going from the medical clinic to the pharmacy. I passed out on the couch after. Perhaps my husband turned the game on while I was snoring? Let's blame him instead of me, shall we ?

Okay, we'll blame him. (I can't get the song, "Blame Canada," out of my mind. Sorry...)

Hope your kids get well quickly -- and neither you nor your Ranger-enabling hubby catch whatever they have.

Seriously, though, the blame is closer to home. As the Post explained: "Joel Ward giveth. Joel Ward taketh away." The Rangers' last two goals were on a power play for a double minor called on him with 30 seconds left. Dumb.

Hathor said:

Okay, we'll blame him. (I can't get the song, "Blame Canada," out of my mind. Sorry...)

Hope your kids get well quickly -- and neither you nor your Ranger-enabling hubby catch whatever they have.

Seriously, though, the blame is closer to home. As the Post explained: "Joel Ward giveth. Joel Ward taketh away." The Rangers' last two goals were on a power play for a double minor called on him with 30 seconds left. Dumb.

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Great. Now I can't get Blame Canada out of my head.

So far I'm holding strong on the illness front. I missed the last cold that had everybody here laid up for weeks. Something tells me I won't be that lucky this time.

Taking a bad penalty 30 seconds left in the game is pure stupidity. Tsk. Tsk.