Form Rejection

(In response to the ever-awesome Rejectionist's anniversary uncontest prompt***)

Have you ever listened to your friends talk about THE BEST MOVIE IN THE WORLD for hours on end, only to go and see the movie the next day, super-excited for the mind-blowing spectacle you are sure to witness... and then the movie is sorta like, meh?

Form rejections are sort of like this for me.

Explain, you say? Well, I waited a long time to begin querying. I wrote one novel, sent it to a few agents and editors that my super-cool writing professor recommended me to, and those agents and editors were kind enough to write personalized rejections that did not eat away at my soul, but made me realize my project wasn't fully cooked, and then I began to write another novel. In the process of writing this second novel, I also researched* query letters.

In doing so, I heard the same thing from what seemed like every corner of the galaxy. My beloved author-profs from school, my writer-friends from SCBWI and AbsoluteWrite, my favorite agent blogs like QueryShark and PubRants all advised the same thing: never give up, even though form rejections will crush your soul.

Naturally, with proposed soul-crushing looming over my head, I waited a bit longer to start querying. I tried to mentally prepare myself. But when I finally got out in the field and started pitching to agents,** and the dreaded form rejections began to roll in... I was kind of like "meh"?

Sure, it sucks that not every agent in the world wants to leap upon my manuscript ravenously and pimp it to all the editors they know. But at least form rejections let me know that I can cross that agent off my list. At least I know where I stand, and that I can query that person with a different project in the future if my current novel doesn't work out.

I've discovered that what I dislike more than form rejections, is the no-response. I understand, of course, why some agents/editors do this. People are f***ing crazy. There are only so many voodoo hex threat emails an agent can take before they decide not to reply to writers they aren't interested in. I get it. But it still sucks for the rest of us to wait for 2 months, and then be unsure if we should cross the non-responsive agent from our list or not.

Then again, this could just be me. I've always hated waiting far more than I hate rejection.

*Read: procrastinated

**Helped along humongously by sites like AgentQuery and QueryTracker

***Also HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the Rejectionist, who is also a brilliant source of top-secret knowledge about publishing and agents and why you shouldn't break down and cry when the dreaded form rejection arrives. <333's for Le R. If you don't stalk this blog already, DO IT NOW. For serious.