Remember how I posted recently about how an agent I really liked had my full manuscript and I was hoping to hear good news soon? Well, I heard news. Sadly, it was not good news. Friday evening I obsessively checked my email for, like, the 12th time that day and I had an email from the agent. Since it was a generic "submission reply from____" through Query Manager I didn't have much hope. Many agents call to make an offer. However, I don't have any hard evidence of how this particular agent operates, so it was always possible she would send a message through Query Manager to set up a call.
You've probably figured out by now that that was not what she was doing. She basically said she likes my premise a lot but didn't love the actual book enough to want to represent it. She gave one criticism, that she felt the pace was a bit slow, but basically the problem was that she had quite a few great manuscripts to choose between and, though she liked mine, she didn't like it enough to choose it over something else.
I'd actually been afraid I was going to get a message to that effect since Wednesday, when this agent tweeted that one of the hardest things about being an agent is not being able to represent everything she requests in full. My first thought was, "So, what category does my manuscript fit in for you? The chosen or the regretfully rejected?"
So, weirdly, because of that tweet I felt sort of mentally prepared. That doesn't mean it didn't feel like a punch in the gut, it just didn't feel like quite as hard a punch. My husband and teenage son had just left for a weekend backpacking trip, so I couldn't even go home and cry to him. I texted the news, and to his credit, he did send a nice text back. I told my 9 year old, and she was appropriately disappointed for me, especially since she really likes the book and wants it to be published, but she didn't really understand what I was going through.
The people who did understand were other writers.I tweeted about my disappointment, and the Twitter #WrtingCommunity really stepped up. So far, two days later, I've gotten 419 likes, 10 retweets, and 4 quote tweets. That blows statistics for all my other tweets out of the water. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I added up all the likes for my other tweets for the past 6 1/2 months since I joined Twitter they would not equal 419. I also got about 100 comments commiserating and/or telling me to hang in there and that I'll find the right agent someday.
I'd still much rather have gotten an offer than a rejection, but, since I had to get a rejection, it's nice that it resulted in so much support. Particularly in the divisive political climate we live in, having 419 people, all but about three of whom don't know you, is a pretty amazing demonstration that people can, in fact, be nice to each other when they want to be.
The other thing that made me feel better was having pizza and a movie night with my 9yo. If I had not just gotten a rejection I would probably have clicked "no" when Mad Mushroom asked if I wanted a dessert before I paid for the pizza, but it's awfully hard to muster up the self control to turn down a giant chocolate chip cookie when one version of your dream has just been crushed, so I didn't turn it down. It turns out Mad Mushroom doesn't just make the only pizza my super pick 9yo will eat. They also makes an amazing giant chocolate chip cookie.
So now it's back to the querying trenches, or really just reacknowledging that that's where I still am and may be for awhile. It's also back to work more seriously on my work in progress, so that I can query that one and let the current one in through the back door if that's not the one that gets me an agent.
Most people who aren't writers have the ideas that actually writing the books is the hard part of being a writer. Don't get me wrong. It's not easy and takes a lot of work. However, it can actually be accomplished relatively quickly if an idea gets ahold of you and you have the time to let it take you where it wants to lead you. Actually getting that brilliant book you produced published and in the hands of readers, whether you're searching for an agent, submitting directly to small presses, or publishing independently, is a million times harder in my humble opinion.
To end, because I really like including pictures and I didn't take one of the pizza or the cookie and sharing a screenshot of Twitter seems hokey, here are pics of my cats. The tabby boy is Daniel Tiger and the black girl is Shadow. And before you asked, no, Daniel Tiger is not named after the cartoon character or the puppet who inspired him. He's named after Daniel Boone because he's an intrepid explorer.
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