Americanbella, learning and loving the craft of writing: REJECTED!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

REJECTED!

Ugh. The word writers LOATHE. Despise. Anguish over. It's a part of the business. The biggest part, actually.

As writers, we write a great story. Most of the time, we LOVE this story. It's got pieces of us in it. Snapshots and videos that run in our mind and get entangled with new characters and they become us. They handle the situation much better than we did, most of the time. They make sense of the whole thing for us. Yeah, that's what they do.

So, after our heart is poured out into our stories, we edit. And edit. Then, we edit.

If we're lucky? We have a few good friends that we trust enough to look it over and give us an honest opinion. Sometimes, we luck up and get the friend of a friend who loves books, will be totally objective, and give us some of the best line edit suggestions we will ever get. And if we're more than lucky, let's say, probably FAVORED by God himself, lol, they LOVE the story, too. KaCHING! :D It does not get better. Trust me.

So, we then query this novel. For the readers only, this means summing up our 100,000 word novel in about 300 or less words and sending it to a literary agent, who gets about a bazillion of these per year, and hoping ours stands out enough to make them ask for more.

Usually, you get a form rejection. "Dear Author...". Wait, they don't capital author. "Dear author...". Yeah, that's it. And you're mighty lucky to even get that.

But sometimes, the rejections have your name in them. "Dear Tracy...".
AHHH. And sometimes, the rejections talk about your character and how that character sounds interesting, but that it's not quite what they're looking for. And they wish you great success in finding the right agent.

This is the next best thing to hearing that an agent loves your voice, is very interested in the story, and would like to sign you on as his or her client. THIS is what I'm praying for. I want to be an Apocalyptie. An author whose book comes out in 2012. It can happen. I'm putting all my chips on the table, working my buns off, and praying alot.