The Daily Rejection

Congrats Beckstah! I hope it works out for you.

I guess I'm officially a writer-in-progress as this morning I woke up to my first query rejection. *le sigh* Not sure whether to pout or frame it...

Beckstah,

Great! We needed some good news around here.

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I'm nervous myself. The three-week "don't send to anyone else" period I'd been asked by one agent for expired last Thursday. I sent a polite email to her last Friday (someone else has requested pages), but haven't heard back.

Unless she tried to call last Friday afternoon, when the Verizon FIOS guy disconnected us in the process of hooking up our next door neighbors. Finally got that squared away. Now only have to worry about my husband's new computer (shipped back to the manufacturer this morning at our expense, grrrr), the remote for our TV (or rather, the TV's refusal to acknowledge the remote), and our air conditioning (simply stopped working yesterday).

Every day now, we just wonder what is going to break next.

Hey, maybe my old, built-in kitchen appliances will fail and I can get a new kitchen out of it!

AbielleRose said:

I guess I'm officially a writer-in-progress as this morning I woke up to my first query rejection. *le sigh* Not sure whether to pout or frame it...

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Neither. One rejection means nothing. A few dozen with nothing to show for it means you may need to re-think something about your project, how you're presenting it, or who you're presenting it to.

Way to be supportive, DJ.

That is being supportive. Unless you have a successful track record rejection is inevitable. I'm just trying to say it's not worth getting down over a few rejections, but if they start to pile up you need to look at why.

I guess that's not emotionally supportive, it's more intended as a sentiment to support a successful mind-frame. Advice I wish I'd received when I was querying my first novel, instead of learning it the hard way.


It doesn't help that I'm on edge today either... Today is the last day of the exclusive period for my full submission. I'm hoping that means she'll get back to me today.

If someone had told me that, I wouldn't have listened. Would you have? Some things are best learned the hard way. Rejections suck. There's no way around it and you have to get a few to make it to publication.

I guess not. But most sage advice is like that, you only realise it's sensible and prudent after you've cocked things up by ignoring the advice.

Speaking of rejections, this thread has been awfully quiet lately. No rejections to report? I had three on queries during the week I was away, but one was personalised from an agent I really respect. She said the writing was very good in the ten page sample, but it hit a few wrong notes (which she pointed out) and it wasn't really her kind of book (I thought that might be the case when I sent it, but since she's one of only two agencies that have any record and are local to me I figured I'd give it a shot).

Dj, Are you only querying Canadian agents or did you send to American agents, too?

If I only queried Canadian agents I'd have been done months ago. There's only a half-dozen good agencies in Canada that accept my genre. All of my submissions I have out now are with American agencies, I had one with The Rights Factory early on, but that was before I made some major and much-needed changes.

The agent who said she liked my writing was Carolyn Swayze, out in White Rock. It would have been cool to work with her, she has a great list of authors, and being within a 20 minute drive would make it easier to have a sit-down chat. I still have a query out with the Cooke Agency but I think it's probably just a non-response.

There aren't many Canadian agents, that's for sure. I guess that's why I get so frustrated when one of them decides to close for queries. I wanted to submit to the Bukowski Agency, she's repped a lot of my favorite books, but she's closed now. And the Cooke Agency closed for six months last year. So I'm sticking with American agents for now, too.

Holly Molly!

After reading the first 10 pages itself i am feeling demotivated and i haven't even finished my first book. Do all print writers face more then 10-100 rejections?

this is hard and at the same time i must really congratulate you guys on your courage and the will to never give up - good luck to all of you who get rejected and to me as well.

A fellow struggling author, Jenna Wallace, blogged about that a while back Sameerjoad. She combed through the QueryTracker success stories to get her stats. The fewest queries to success was 9, the most 361. Average was 68. I have a feeling the number is creeping up over time though.

Also, keep in mind that's the number of queries on THAT project. Most authors take two or three books to get there.

http://inthedreamstate.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-many-queries-does-it-take-sequel.html

pollymilton said:

Alisha - did she really type "chalk full"? Holy hell. It's "chock full." Hmmmm.

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Yes, hehe she did. I copied right from her e-mail and pasted

Chock, gibe, and pique, those are some of my pet-peeves. If you don't know the word don't try to use it. If you're unsure then look it up!

I've been quiet because things are quiet here. Dan Lazar read a bit as a favor for a friend and said:

Hi—this is very energetic, but honestly I’m having a bit of a hard time unlocking the plot unfolding here… I’ll step aside, but thank you so much for the look. I appreciate it.

So, I'm thinking if I do need to look at my first chapters again....AND, I'm sick, AND my friend says that agencies are VERY quiet during the summer.

DJ, still thinking good thoughts for you, Hathor as well.

BECKSTAH!!!! WOOT!!!!

Polly

If you want to share a chapter or two, direct or on SYW I'd be happy to have a look and give an opinion polly. I tend to be very direct with my criticism, but I've been told I have a good eye.

Thanks, polly. I'm telling myself that agents frequently don't meet the time frames they themselves set up. Their first priority has to be to existing clients -- and they have their own lives as well.

This agent I'm waiting on was very prompt in responding to my query (and still apologized for taking so long!) and has responded to my emails very quickly before. We talked for an hour and she seems to get my book. So...

Oh well. I've been busy getting the latest draft of my second book done so I can send it out to the next set of readers. Nothing like printing it out and reading out loud to see repetition of words, etc.

Although it did scare me to see that I had the Montgomery County police (previously involved in the plot) respond to a break-in in Howard County. Ouch -- how did I miss that one?

I need to go through again to check for cliched expressions, then it will be good to go. (See how I need to be careful about cliche ). By then I hope I will have heard from this agent...

Those are always the easiest to take. Usually by that time I have them marked as 'reject' anyhow.

Well I'll add some rejections on just so we don't misinterpret a quiet thread for major success for everyone. ;-)

I've now received 3 rejections on partials or fulls with no feedback. Just the "not for me" line which is really hard. At this point I'd love to hear the story sucks, the characters suck or "hey hack learn to write"! Seriously, that would be more helpful.

Hell, at this point on some of my submissions, I'd like to get the "not for me" line. For closure and all...

I couldn't stand it anymore. Yesterday, I sent another email to the agent who'd requested a sort-of exclusive (no new submissions), now expired. I figured I could get away with it given my phone problems right after I'd emailed before.

So far nothing. I'm beginning to think that she is either real busy with something else or my book is truly craptastic.

Bah. If I don't hear anything this week, I guess I can send the itty bitty submission someone else asked for and query the few agents I overlooked. The other submissions are looking pretty dead right now.

Odds are they didn't get too far. Were the requests made off query only submissions or did you submit material along with those queries?

Put the first chapter up on SYW or find someone here to give you some beta feedback. We may not have the same perspective as an agent but it will probably give you a pretty good idea of where the problems lie.

I've had those 3 rejections and there are 3 more pending. The 3 rejections were from query letter only. One of the pendings is letter only, the other two had at least the first chapter with the query letter.

Yeah, I find that the agents who want a query letter only are far more likely to send little or no feedback with the response when they reject on requested material. Unless an agent specifically says 'query letter only' or 'no sample pages' I'll send along the first few, just to make things easier.