Dealing with Rejection
Writing stories brings me joy. My imagination kicks into overdrive when creating settings and characters needed to carry a plot from start to finish. I’ve developed a sense of awe for the simple sentence and the myriad of ways a few words can be configured to convey a desired image. When structuring a sentence, I love exploring word choices that will sharpen my prose and clarify my original intent. Rarely do I find writing to be ponderous work.
Like in any endeavor, however, there is a downside. Mine comes from ego. Writing a full manuscript can take me a year: four to six months to write a first draft, and four to six months to work on revisions. Writing a book is an enormous investment of time and energy, time I willingly give. But when the process nears completion, I want the work to be read and appreciated. And that is where I struggle. For a book to have an audience, it needs to be published, and the process of pursuing publication is ponderous work, carrying a high probability for rejection.
The most traditional route for publication is to find a literary agent to champion your book. A good agent will know which publishers will be most receptive to your work, therefore enhancing the opportunity for a book deal. Querying an agent requires several hoops to jump through and each agent will have different hoops, so the process is quite time consuming. Yet, for all the time I’ve given to write a book and then to query an agent, the note below is a typical response I’ve received over and over again.
“Thank you for sending me your query for FINDING JADE. As I am not sure your project is the right fit for my list at this time, I will regretfully have to pass. Thank you for considering me, and I wish you the best of luck with your future queries.”
The frustration I have with this entire process is the lack of feedback for why my proposal was rejected. I know agents are very busy and wrestle every day with queries like mine. I realize that if they begin giving individual feedback, they will not have the time to support the authors they do represent. I can also imagine that if they do give feedback, they will open the door to angry authors who will want to challenge their decision. Agents are in the business to market books that they feel will sell. Publishers will not want to pay authors for books they feel will only sit on the shelves of bookstores. They are in the business to make money.
I get all this, and I don’t feel sorry for myself. Still, I wish I had better insight on what the agents actually thought when they read my query letters and the few sample pages I sent them.
I am sure there have been very sound reasons for many of the rejections, but I wonder what they have been.
· Is my work not matching current trends agents are looking for?
· Because I have not established a track record of selling books, do I represent too large of risk for their limited time?
· Do they think my books are not original enough, or are they too quirky?
· Are there evident problems in my writing style that turn agents off?
· Did my query letter fail to grab their attention, thus keeping them from reading my entire manuscript?
The answers may be all, some, or none of the above. I still don’t know. I do know that my frustration is shared by many writers, so I am hardly alone. Fortunately, there are alternate routes to publication, including querying certain publishers who do not require an agent when considering an author’s work. Self-publishing is another avenue open to writers and one that I have considered.
The good news is that I like the stories I’ve written, and I believe they are worth reading. And before long I will have a new book that I will begin to trot in front of agents. I guess getting published is like buying a lottery ticket; you can’t win if you don’t enter. And with each new ticket comes a brand-new hope. Maybe tomorrow will be my lucky day.