My Ode to Sissyphus.

Orklad

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Hello everyone,

I've been writing steadily for the past 15 years or so, possibly a bit longer, but only recently have decided to try to share my work with the general world, which means (so far) querying with agents.

Sixteen rejection letters later, I'm asking what in the world I was thinking.

it's worse than sending out job applications after getting laid off (which I've also done).

So, yeah. The process is awful and fills me with despair and existential dread.

How're you?

-D
 

Paul Lamb

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Sixteen rejection letters isn't really a lot in this business. I read somewhere that if you get 100 rejections, then it's time to consider that your work is not really that good. But I'm not sure that is fair. If a query letter doesn't do justice to a well written novel, the work is still good but the letter needs work.

Take heart. I just got another rejection letter yesterday for one of my stories. And I know I've had more than 16 rejections for some of my pieces, but I'm afraid to look in my log to do the math.
 

Stytch

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Welcome! Highly suggest you meander your way to 50 posts (don't rush!) and then put your query up for crits over at Query Letter Hell. Just pause on sending them out until you get some feedback. It's rough, but it's super helpful.
 

CameronJohnston

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Welcome to AW! The first time you send out submissions are always the worst and I remember it well. It's hard not to take it personally sometimes but I assure you that 16 is not a lot in this game, and do bear in mind that it's not always a rejection based on quality: sometimes they will have already taken a vaguely similar thing recently, sometimes they are are overstocked on horror/fantasy/thrillers etc and are looking for something else. Perhaps they have see too many bee-keeping murder mysteries doing the rounds...there are so many reasons an agent might not bite even if you have a good book. All you can do is polish your book until it shines, have a good query letter and hope somebody loves it.
 

regdog

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:welcome:



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kranix1

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Keep on keeping on man. Anything in the arts is tough, music, acting, writing. Not sure which one is worse but the ones who succeed are often the ones who were too dumb to quit.

Keep going.

Stephen King talks about this a little in his book on writing. Sticking rejection letters on a nail in the wall till they wouldn't fit and having to put up a second one, or something like that.

Keep going.
 

kujo_jotaro

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You'd be surprised how much of it depends on the query letter.

For a long time I submitted to agents, only to get the dreaded auto reject, and thought maybe my work sucked. I was convinced with my last one though that wasn't the case, even though again, after initially sending it out (and having worked through the query with professional editors), I was still only getting auto rejections. But after re-working the query on AQC I got some bites, and although I didn't get further interest, I was able to get some detailed info from agents on what they didn't like about my manuscript writing, which gave me food for thought for my next and helped me to improve (hopefully!).

So really, from my experience, work on making that query airtight!
 

bleacher1099

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Don't despair! There will (unfortunately) be more rejections to come but all it takes is one request and...voila!