Somehow, I'm OK...

Rejections to queries have never really bothered me---Rejections to partials and fulls, especially if it's a form reject, really bum me out.

Some days yes, and some days no. Depends if the hormones are raging. ;-)
Definitely don't like R's on partials or fulls.

I actually just started querying my first novel yesterday. I have received four form rejections and amazingly I was perfectly fine. No depression, no "I can't send another query", no turning to ice cream (okay that's a lie. I did have ice cream).

I think it's because the rejection is so final. It's the end of the road for one query and the beginning of another. It's the wait that kills me. The wondering if they've read it yet. Wondering if it even got there. Wondering if it's going to be my first partial request.

Plus, I know that even bestselling authors like Stephen King and JK Rowling got their share of rejections and look at them now! JK Rowling said she could paper her room with rejections. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was picked up out of the rejection pile! And now she's richer than the Queen of England.

There was only one rejection that hurt and that was from the agent of my dreams. But there are other agents. And it only takes one agent to say yes.

Rebecca_Rogers said:

I keep telling myself the same about the JK Rowling. I think she sent it to like 25 agents and got rejected by all, except the last. That's what I read, anyway.

Click to expand...

The number of rejections JK Rowling received seems to be the subject of many an urban legend. I did a bit of web cruising just now and found that the reported number varies from a low of one to a high of "over 100."

The most depressing story I encountered was that her agent (she already had one) had shopped the book around and gotten nowhere. The last publisher he tried was about to reject it, till the publisher's 8-year-old daughter nagged him into doing a token print run of 500 copies, just to get her off his back. The rest is history.

I believe that one. That's the kind of whimsy on which the publishing world seems to run.