The Pain of Rejection

Yesterday, I got rejected by the agent of my dreams. For the most part, it was a form rejection. And it broke my heart. There was a short note at the very bottom of the email saying that although my writing is strong, the story didn't stand out enough to make her fall in love with it. Sound familiar? If it doesn't, then you haven't been reading my rejection letters. They are starting to sound like a broken record.

I guess as far as rejections go, I would much rather be told that I have strong writing with a weak story that didn't quite grab them than be told that my story seemed interesting, but my writing sucked. Of course, G and I have spent hours talking about how a truly great writer can make pretty much any story fly as long as he/she can make you love the characters. Epic fail on that front, I suppose.

One agent does not a disaster make, though, and I plan to keep sending queries. Maybe someone will see potential there and want to give it a shot. I don't even have a list of possible agents yet, to be honest. My goal is to make that list, give the manuscript a final revision and polish, then send out a fresh batch of queries on September 1st. That's two weeks from tomorrow. I'm also toying with the idea of writing a 3 book series of short, 50,000 word books with a plan to digitally self-publish them through the Kindle store. There's a chance I would be like the majority and sell somewhere around 20 copies total. But there's also a good chance I would sell 20 copies a day at some point. Or more. I'm willing to work hard to see if it could be a viable career option. There's just something about not having to go through these gatekeepers that is so damn appealing. But that's another blog post all together.