The Daily Rejection

Ah, crud. My highest paying magazine has just rejected my last article--that makes two in a month. The article was fine, it's just that they'd done something similar before and didn't want to duplicate. Now I really have to drum up something new, but that has a wide focus.

tri

Glad to hear from you, Quickbread, and glad to hear about the request. "Beautiful" is exciting.

I've been making lots of notes. Indeed, I woke up in the middle of the night with more ideas. This might actually work. It will require writing all the remaining chapters from scratch, though. I shouldn't be frustrated if I can't just rattle it off 70 pages or so in one day.

I'm telling myself I should be happy. Writing new stuff is a lot more fun than trying to cut words, researching agents, querying, and getting rejected. It will get done. Slow and steady wins the race, like Aesop said. Or as we Maryland Terrapins fans say, "Fear the turtle."

Polly, please let us know how your son is doing.

Tri...sorry. Ask Carleree for a cupcake. They're delicious.

Netted myself a request from the #WVTP (still going on for another few hours if you guys want to pitch).

If you don't know about it, go to http://monibw.blogspot.ca/ the rules are there. Essentially you pitch your novel with the #WVTP tag, agents look, if they like they request it. Pretty broad range of tastes represented among the agents, but mostly YA/children's.

It was hard, but I managed to write a new chapter today. I had to do some considerable language cleanup, and I'm sure I need to polish some more. But I'm proud of myself.

Meanwhile, we finally planted a crape myrtle in my yard today. (Well, the landscapers planted it.) They couldn't understand why my husband had lived with crape myrtle envy for over twenty years.

Tonight we saw some deer in the yard next door. We went out at whooped at them. The damn things keep eating things they aren't supposed to like, at least in our yard. They ran away.

All in all, I feel like I've hit the trifecta. (The Nats are leading the Braves, too, but I don't know what comes after trifecta, if anything.)

I think I'm going to go for some of that Yukon Jack. A hoary night? I'll never tell

Agents are hard at work in spite of the holiday. Four rejections today, although one of them invited me to submit my next work.

Odd thing is, within a half hour, three agents/agencies all starting with the letter "p" rejected me. What are the odds of that?

Maybe I shouldn't query in alphabetical order anymore.

Drachen Jager said:

Agents are hard at work in spite of the holiday. Four rejections today, although one of them invited me to submit my next work.

Odd thing is, within a half hour, three agents/agencies all starting with the letter "p" rejected me. What are the odds of that?

Maybe I shouldn't query in alphabetical order anymore.

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Yep, sounds like an omen to me. This process seems to involve magic.

Maybe you should sacrifice a chicken. Not a real one, a rubber one. A group of Nats fans did that recently outside Nationals Park.

In spite of the holiday read time, still no rejects or responses from anyone. Feeling very lonely here.

Reject on a full today. Agent had it less than two weeks. She heaped on the praise, said it was a good concept with a lot of commercial appeal, but it wasn't right for her list. Sad thing is, this wasn't a form rejection, but also wasn't helpful.

Oh well, onward. I still have some fulls out there.

Form rejection today. Lovely personal one yesterday praising my writing, characterisation and concept but ultimately saying that she would find it difficult to sell such a quirky lit fic title. Oh well.

I have queried less than 20 agents and had lots of requests for fulls so far so there is still a long way to go!

Reject on synopsis only, for reasons that it wasn't quite crime fiction, which was the main staple of the publisher. Onward and upward....or downward as the case may be.

tri

triceretops said:

Reject on synopsis only, for reasons that it wasn't quite crime fiction, which was the main staple of the publisher. Onward and upward....or downward as the case may be.

tri

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Hey, tri, make up your mind. Yesterday you were feeling lonely because you hadn't received any responses

Upward, downward -- depends on one's frame of reference, no?

I'm telling myself now that all that rejection made me finally move off a form of my NF that wouldn't sell to one that might. I may be delusional, of course. I would hate to do all this rewriting to get the book to a form agents said they'd like and then have them say it's still flawed: "Sorry, I guess the basic problem is that you can't write" or "Turns out your story isn't interesting after all."

One more chapter to rewrite completely, then I polish. This chapter is tricky. If it was a film, there would be music and a montage sequence. I have to report in some fashion what happened, but I'm struggling to make it interesting. I woke up in the middle of the night with a possible approach, but I haven't seen if it works yet.

Has anyone heard from Polly lately? She's entirely too quiet and it's making me nervous.

Carleree said:

Has anyone heard from Polly lately? She's entirely too quiet and it's making me nervous.

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Nope, I was feeling the same way. Has she been tweeting? I haven't gotten into that because I waste enough time as it is. (Not that Twitter is a waste of time for everyone, mind you. I'm sure it would be for me, though.)

Hathor said:

Nope, I was feeling the same way. Has she been tweeting? I haven't gotten into that because I waste enough time as it is. (Not that Twitter is a waste of time for everyone, mind you. I'm sure it would be for me, though.)

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No, she hasn't been tweeting lately, either.

Carleree said:

No, she hasn't been tweeting lately, either.

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Oh dear. Polly? You there?

HELLLOOOOO!

Thanks for your concern. It means a lot, honestly. Sent both kids off to school this AM for first time in 10 days (son). The day he got home from his brief hosp. stay my daughter came home from school play 5 minutes before him with LICE. So, as you can imagine, it's been a long 2 weeks here. And then husband went to ATL for work for a few nights. Recovery has been smooth, lice less horrible than I imagined - it helped that I only found 5 live bugs.

No news from anyone, really, on the book front. Did get invited by long-lost-platonic-only-love-now-enormously-rich-captain-of-industry to come visit (his treat) to the beaches of NC. Feel like hopping on plane TODAY. (he's the one in the drama school stories)

I'm glad to be back with you all!

Polly

Thanks for checking in. I'm relieved everything's okay now.

I was fortunate enough never to have to deal with lice. Only broken bones and leprosy-caliber strep throat.

Hey, tri, make up your mind. Yesterday you were feeling lonely because you hadn't received any responses

Yeah, well I am grateful for contact. I just wish it was for those partials and fulls out there. That was the only one that was a synopsis only. I was expecting a rush of responses after this weekend, but it just goes to show you that the industry is never going to follow suit on anything you believe should happen.

Maybe more this week--rejects with meat on their bones, wot?

Since we're all in the same boat here, I'd thought I'd blog today about something that affects all of us. I don't really have a solid answer for the subject, but I'm sure many of you/us can identify with these feelings. My blog is Guerrilla Warfare For Writers (special weapons and tactics). Today's post:

THE PLAGUE OF NON-RESONDERS

http://guerrillawarfareforwriters.b...-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=38

(Or in my sig line)

Take care all, and remember, take to heart, the last paragraph of the post.

tri

Actually tri, I just got a fairly long e-mail with constructive criticism and compliments from an agent (though it was still a no).

I know it's against protocol, but I sent her a short e-mail to say thanks.

Actually, Drachen, it totally rocks that you sent a thank you note to the agent. It brightens their dreary, boring days.

Now they're rolling in--got a non-form email from a medium-sized outfit, and recorded it on my spreadsheet. Just wasn't the kind of book they were looking for or used to publishing. I'll take it!

tri

I send thank yous for personalized rejections. Sometimes it turns into an R & R.

I should know better than to query on an empty stomach. Sent a query in tonight before dinner, was rejected in less than half an hour. I probably should've spelled his name right.

Gosh, another one popped in. Real nice publisher, said they loved it but their slots were filled. They wanted to see it as a first sub at the beginning of next year, with the email letter included, if I didn't sell it by then.

Well that's about the closest maybe/most likely rejection I've ever had. So, there's hope.

tri

I sent a thank you back to one of my personalised responses. The agent emailed me back (which I wasn't expecting) saying 'Just don't give up on your novel!' so I replied saying I wasn't going to give up on 7 months of hard work. She then got back asking to see the full manuscript, impressed that I'd written the thing in just 7 months, which was kind of my intention in mentioning it.

I think it's always worth saying thank you.