The Daily Rejection, Vol. 2

Yes. It's a dreadful way to treat a person

Bracing for a rejection from a literary challenge I entered (from a well-known literary agency). It was a long-shot. Oh well. Time to find another horse to ride into the sunset.

I'm one of the editors of a magazine, and what stuns me is how subjective tastes can be. I picked a story rejected by others for being too vague, but it has now been nominated for a Pushcart thanks to votes from some of the others on the editorial team. After a certain level of writing craft, the deciding factor is personal taste: some of my stories got rejected dozens of times, then got shortlisted for awards.Others, written quickly and dashed off, were accepted within days.

As to novels, I think it is absolutely about timing: if there's one ms that's done well (pre-empt/ auction) agents are looking for something similar and if you happen to have another like it immediately after, you'll find an agent quickly. Ditto for sales of ms.

Getting an agent is a long, hard process, and the only thing that helps is who you know. If an ms gets recommended by a personal connection, it gets read much faster, and by the agent, not the assistant. I've had assistants love a book but the agent come back and decline it. Luck and connections play as big a part as writing abilities, or story.

I tell myself it is 50 per cent luck and the other 50, ability. Can't do much about luck, but I'm going to put in a 100 per cent to improve my ability.

Jeneral said:

I think most rejections have been "Dear FirstName", though I've gotten a few "Dear LastName" or the dreaded "Author." I've gotten plenty with no address at all, just right into the "no" part.

There's been some good news around here, that's awesome, y'all! Keep it up!!

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Most replies are form rejections, and most magazines, publishers, and agents have the software configured to the first name. When a Reject button is clicked, the mail goes out with the standard text, and mode of address. There's really no good way to reject, because all rejections hurt.

For the record, most of my rejections have started with "Dear Pen Name." I just brought up the few "Dear Mr. Pen Names" because I thought it was interesting and hey, it amused me.

Yes, it can be amusing or offensive, and I wish people took more care. Our magazine receives many cover letters that make mistakes in gender, and name spelling.
We use the form letter, because writing individual responses would be impossible: all of us work for free. The magazine pays, and tries to keep response times to about two weeks ( unless a piece is being debated over internally.)
Like you, I've learned to take it in my stride. On bad days, I can be offended, but I tell myself it is because I'm having a bad day. Mistakes happen, from both writers and editors, and unless someone is making a personal target of an editor or writer, I just say it is all good, and move on.

Filigree said:

Yes, that's a crappy way to behave. She should at least have sent an email saying she couldn't do it.

I had that happen with three different PitchWars mentors last year. All requested fulls, and said they'd give a little feedback even if they didnt pick me. I didn't make it out of the first round. Only one mentor gave feedback, and it was really useful. Crickets from the other two. I didn't bother to nudge, because there was no obligation on their part. But it would definitely make me less inclined to pick them as potential mentors for a future contest. Or even follow them on social media.

I have until end of September to take the small press offer. I nudged the remaining agents in late August. Only a few got back to me, all politely stepping aside. I sent formal notices withdrawing the query from the rest, except for one person who still has a full and asked for more time.

The industry is so slow right now, and I'm seeing too many friends treated rather shabbily by the BigFive SFF pubs I was targeting. It's shaken my support and my own future plans.

It's a weird kind of relief to be winding down the agent-hunting process. I've been at it through three mss and eight years. I had one agent for contract help on one book, but we parted ways when rights reverted on that book (agent didn't rep my other genres). For the next five or six books, I *can't* involve an agent because they're all in a series, and related to the first one out with a new publisher. So until I write something completely different, there's no point in even looking for representation. Maybe by then the publishing world will have found a new equilibrium.

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If I had an offer from a small press right now, Filigree, I'd take it. In fact, I'm looking at small presses and digital imprints to submit to just as soon as I've given enough time to agents to respond (or not). I've had ten years and three ms's, but I really thought I had cracked it with this one, and who knows, if I had this ms two years ago, things might have been different. But now it is taking agents and publishers so long to respond, how can any of us plan any sort of career? Impossible.

AcaciaNeem said:

I'm one of the editors of a magazine, and what stuns me is how subjective tastes can be. I picked a story rejected by others for being too vague, but it has now been nominated for a Pushcart thanks to votes from some of the others on the editorial team. After a certain level of writing craft, the deciding factor is personal taste: some of my stories got rejected dozens of times, then got shortlisted for awards.Others, written quickly and dashed off, were accepted within days.

As to novels, I think it is absolutely about timing: if there's one ms that's done well (pre-empt/ auction) agents are looking for something similar and if you happen to have another like it immediately after, you'll find an agent quickly. Ditto for sales of ms.

Getting an agent is a long, hard process, and the only thing that helps is who you know. If an ms gets recommended by a personal connection, it gets read much faster, and by the agent, not the assistant. I've had assistants love a book but the agent come back and decline it. Luck and connections play as big a part as writing abilities, or story.

I tell myself it is 50 per cent luck and the other 50, ability. Can't do much about luck, but I'm going to put in a 100 per cent to improve my ability.

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On the subject of Who You Know, I read a blog post by a writer this morning who has just had her first book published. She is in her mid 20s, got several agents interested as soon as she sent her ms out, accepted an offer from top notch agent within weeks, spent a year editing it with her (because, she says, looking back, her book was no where near ready) and now she's published. Guess what? The writer works as an editor for a publishing house.

I felt like packing it in right there and then, but you're right. All we can control is the quality of our work, so I'll just focus on that and try really really hard not to get bitter!

NotForUsThanks said:

On the subject of Who You Know, I read a blog post by a writer this morning who has just had her first book published. She is in her mid 20s, got several agents interested as soon as she sent her ms out, accepted an offer from top notch agent within weeks, spent a year editing it with her (because, she says, looking back, her book was no where near ready) and now she's published. Guess what? The writer works as an editor for a publishing house.

I felt like packing it in right there and then, but you're right. All we can control is the quality of our work, so I'll just focus on that and try really really hard not to get bitter!

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There are really no guarantees of success. I got to choose between 4 agents and signed with my agent one month from the date I started querying, but am still dealing with Rs from publishers. I'm just going ahead and writing another.

Here's a success story. To me, the telling bit is this part:

Nonetheless, O'Donnell wouldn't necessarily have picked Harper as the member of the tutor group who would find fame and fortune. "I thought her book was exceptional," O'Donnell says. "But there were other books, one in particular, that I felt the same way about. And nothing happened with that book. The truth is, this business is so very arbitrary. The stars were aligned for Jane."

This is in no way to take anything away from the author, who worked as hard as any of us who are writing, revising, querying. But there is an element of luck involved--so all we can do is just keep on keeping on. Writing is what we do best, right? Getting bitter and giving up won't help--when you're digging a tunnel out towards daylight, you can't stop: you never know how close to the surface you are already.

So true. And I like the digging a tunnel analogy.

NotForUsThanks said:

So true. And I like the digging a tunnel analogy.

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haha yep. best keep digging.

AcaciaNeem said:

I'm one of the editors of a magazine, and what stuns me is how subjective tastes can be. I picked a story rejected by others for being too vague, but it has now been nominated for a Pushcart thanks to votes from some of the others on the editorial team. After a certain level of writing craft, the deciding factor is personal taste: some of my stories got rejected dozens of times, then got shortlisted for awards.Others, written quickly and dashed off, were accepted within days.

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This has always been oddly comforting for me. One of the short stories I recently sold received kind of a harsh rejection from a magazine I loved where the editor pointed to specific things that they didn’t like. The venue that ended up buying it pointed to those same things and loved them.
One of my professors always said it’s not just about your story. It has to get to the right person, with the right tastes, and on the right day. It’s your job to do the other 50 percent.
I can see how it could be discouraging for some, but for me it gives me hope. It means that as long as I’ve done everything I can, even if ten agents or editors don’t like something, all it takes is one.

Full rejection today. She was kind but said she didn't connect. It was so polite and impersonal it might have been a form letter, I honestly couldn't tell.

I just closed out two queries as R's. Both were "no response means no" agents. One had passed the "if I haven't answered within x time it's a no" date, and I saw on QueryTracker that the other is caught up on queries past the date I sent mine.

Sent out two more. Still waiting on the other 7 I have out from mid-August. Crickets on my fulls so far, though it's early days to expect any response.

Collie -- Sorry about that R on the full. I've gotten those impersonal ones on fulls before and they're the worst.

Lianna Williamson -- I hope you hear good news on the fulls. I know waiting is so tough.

Notforusthanks -- Ouch! That is a crappy way to treat someone. However, you might have dodged a bullet. It sounds like she perhaps is kind of unreliable. Maybe this was a good thing.

What do y'all think about nudges? I queried an agent back in April and have been following her on twitter. She says she responds to every query, but I still haven't heard back. She is the one who wrote on twitter that she was up to all of the queries from May 18th and had about 28 she had set aside for further reviews. IDK if mine if is one, and I'm having anxiety it's not. I also fear though every time I nudge an agent (some guidelines say you should if you haven't heard from them within a certain timeframe) I just get a rejection.

Thoughts?

sockycat said:

One of my professors always said it’s not just about your story. It has to get to the right person, with the right tastes, and on the right day. It’s your job to do the other 50 percent.
I can see how it could be discouraging for some, but for me it gives me hope. It means that as long as I’ve done everything I can, even if ten agents or editors don’t like something, all it takes is one.

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I've come to the same conclusion as your professor. When sending out stories I send as an automaton, once rejected, it goes out again if I'm confident about the story.
The 50% part is what is keeping me sane these days. I know I've done my 100% with the 50%in my hands. Might as well do the same with the next one.

Collie and Lianna, sorry to hear about the Rs. I haven't asked for my Rs from the agent yet, but I'm guessing they've piled up in the last month or so.

Belle_91: Re: nudges, I think it is all right if you send a one liner asking whether it is still under consideration, etc. It has been 4 months since you queried her and I'd call that a decent interval. If yours has slipped between the cracks, she'll look it up. Without nudging, if she doesn't get back, that's the same result as a rejection, right?

Keep the faith, and keep sending out more queries. Rooting for you.

Phewww what a long couple weeks it's been for me. But I'm mostly set up in my new condo in Chicago and I start orientation tomorrow! So crazy to think that just last summer I had the crazy idea to maybe go to grad school and now it's finally here and everything has changed. It's a bit scary, tbh. I'm worried I'm making a huge mistake, but my boyfriend told me to give it at least 18 months and I think he's right. Change is always hard but necessary to get to the best things, I think.

In writing news, I got a very unexpected full request on MS6 the other day. This was a query I sent back in January, got a surprise partial request at the end of February (after I'd already CNRed) and figured was an implicit rejection by now. So that was nice. I always think getting a full request from a partial is a good sign, because they've already read part of it so you know they're not going to completely hate the writing. Now I have 2 fulls (one is from June 2016!!) still out for MS6 and 1 partial lingering in the ether. I think I also am going to submit MS6 for the Angry Robot open submission, which means I really am going to do those edits I keep talking about. And if I do those, that means I can send it back to the R&R agent. So MS6 is almost but not completely dead yet!

As far as MS7, I still haven't decided if I want to do a round of queries or not. I still just have the one query out from PitMad for that. I'm happy with it, as of my last read-through, but it hasn't been read by anyone else so that's always dangerous. But then I'm not crazy about beta reads anyway, I mostly do them because it's expected and just in case something dire comes up. Hm.

Looks like I missed some good news snoopy:) and some bad news Hug2:) while I was out, so congratulations and condolences to everyone as needed!

As far as the state of the publishing industry--seems like it's always bad. I just keep my head down and keep working, I feel like trying to predict the industry drives me crazy and makes me despair, so I just ignore it and keep doing my thing. My thing hasn't been anyone else's thing so far, but there's always the next one...

Beta readers are a mixed blessing, mostly because they can be as idiosyncratic in their tastes as everyone else. I had three people read the version of my novel I'm querying right now (after a total reqwrite of chapters 1-3). 2 loved it. One said she'd spent a day she should have been working reading it on the sly because she couldn't put it down. One said it was a boring mess filled with purple prose. Both extremes are from people who read a ton and who write so.... what to do with that?

Welcome back, noranne!

Um, is weird to welcome someone back to rejection?

Speaking of rejection, I woke up this morning to a form R (on a query, not one of the fulls). Yay.

AcaciaNeem, you're so right about the subjectivity. Which makes sense, really. As a reader, I've been unimpressed by books others have loved, and had others be all "meh" about some of my best-beloved favorites. And editors/agents/etc. are readers, at heart.

Knowing Someone certainly doesn't hurt, but then there are plenty of writers who were nothing but a query in a slush pile before their big break. I think the only real secret is to keep flinging yourself at the brick wall until one of you falls down.

sockycat - I too find it oddly comforting. My job is to send the thing out, and if it comes back, to send it out again; once it's out, I've done my bit. So whatever happens after that is on somebody else.

R cookies to Collie and lianna.

Emermouse - Always best to be amused if you possibly can.

Belle_91 - I mostly don't bother with nudges; when I have, the result has just been more silence. But there's certainly nothing wrong with sending a polite prod if it's nagging at you.

noranne - Go you! Change is always nervous-making, but the worst mistake is not trying, so you're already ahead of the game. And yay on the full!

I'll add my voice to the dubiousness about beta readers. My alpha reader has been working hard at getting better, but mostly I get people who either don't read closely (at least not for any of the things I care about), or who are only interested in pushing the story to be something other than the story I'm trying to write. I suppose like anything else it's a matter of finding the right match, but there's only so many haystacks you can dig through before you start wondering if you really need that needle....

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I'm not sure I'm cut out for this querying thing. Spent three days researching an agent, then researching another at the same agency who seemed more copascetic, then ended up querying the head of the agency. Who I could have just skipped all the researching and gone for from the start, since the only reason I hadn't queried her ages ago was she wasn't previously taking my genre. And I put in a line of personalization (which I almost never do) -- and screwed it up (put the agency in the wrong city).

After due consideration, I decided to stick my hand in and jiggle the grenade send a correction -- decided I'd rather be remembered as the doofus who sent a (hopefully amusing) apology than as the the doofus who couldn't tell Denver from Chicago. *headdesk*

Liz_V said:

AcaciaNeem, you're so right about the subjectivity. Which makes sense, really. As a reader, I've been unimpressed by books others have loved, and had others be all "meh" about some of my best-beloved favorites. And editors/agents/etc. are readers, at heart.

Knowing Someone certainly doesn't hurt, but then there are plenty of writers who were nothing but a query in a slush pile before their big break. I think the only real secret is to keep flinging yourself at the brick wall until one of you falls down.

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Subjectivity is a killer. My agent keeps telling me it is not my book, but the industry. It is still a bitter pill to swallow. Whenever I catch myself going negative I remind myself how subjective this business really is, that it is all about timing-- the right book at the right desk at the right moment, and that after a point not getting published is not a commentary on the quality of writing but on the perseverance of the writer. I keep hearing of people who went on to do big things after multiple rejections.

Yes, some gems do emerge from the slush pile, but very, very sadly, agents do also look at human connections-- if an MS is recommended by a writing teacher/ school, it goes to the top of the pile.

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Liz_V said:

I'm not sure I'm cut out for this querying thing. Spent three days researching an agent, then researching another at the same agency who seemed more copascetic, then ended up querying the head of the agency. Who I could have just skipped all the researching and gone for from the start, since the only reason I hadn't queried her ages ago was she wasn't previously taking my genre. And I put in a line of personalization (which I almost never do) -- and screwed it up (put the agency in the wrong city).

After due consideration, I decided to stick my hand in and jiggle the grenade send a correction -- decided I'd rather be remembered as the doofus who sent a (hopefully amusing) apology than as the the doofus who couldn't tell Denver from Chicago. *headdesk*

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Commiserations on the query goofup. When I was querying, my rule was to draft the query on one day and send it the next. I keep making very silly mistakes in my emails, so whenever I can afford it--blog posts, email responses, FB comments, I write a draft, let it rest for a day, then revise and click publish/ send.

The good news is, if they like your query, they'll ask for the partial/ full, irrespective of your knowledge of geography.

Yep, I usually let things sit for a bit, too, and read 'em multiple times before clicking that button you can't take back. ;-) I also have a very standardized query with anything I might change for specific agents marked with square brackets, so I can easily search it and make sure all that got cleaned up properly.

But sometimes the doofus-force is stronger than any precautions.

AcaciaNeem said:

The good news is, if they like your query, they'll ask for the partial/ full, irrespective of your knowledge of geography.

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Yep. And hey, if by some miracle it turns into a request/offer/agreement, it might make an amusing how-I-got-my-agent story some day.

Form rejection from F&SF. At this point I'm hoping for a "pity publication" from some major market. "He's been trying for so long, let's just give him a break."

With 12 queries out (my first batch ever), I've gotten 4 personalized Rs and one form R. Not the win I was hoping for, but not a total loss. A few had decent little notes that were helpful. I'll take it!

Re: the market is subjective -- I'm always reminded of Arrested Development when Maeby is "working" at the film studio and she bumps into some bigshot who sees her book report and decided to "fast-track" it into the next big thing. When they're looking for what you're selling, you're going to make a sale. Whether that means conforming to the market or waiting until the market changes in your favor, that is up to you. And maybe it means neither of those things but that there's some little spark missing from your MS that is needed to make the final leap. That spark could come at any time. Be ready and be open to the idea of change.

Best to everyone and keep trying!