Thank you for your reply but did you really have to say that you didn’t feel ‘passionately’ enough about my work to represent me? When you say that – and you’re not the first (which makes me wonder whether they teach you the parlance in agent school) it makes me feel that you found my writing dull and turgid.
My husband said that trying to get an agent is like going for a new job. You have lots of interviews and don't get the job, until suddenly you're successful and then everything works out for the best! But imagine turning down an applicant for a job by saying – We’re afraid we didn’t feel passionately enough about your application to offer you an interview. Or, thank you for coming in for the interview but we’ve given the job to the person we felt more passionate about!!
I get that publishing is different (to many other businesses ) and that when you take on a new author it’s always a risk and you have to feel that you are fully behind them in order to promote them to a publisher – I do understand that, but if I had my way I’d alter the phrasing of your knock-backs. Hmmm…what could you say instead? You’re shite…ha, ha, ha, no, seriously, let me think; It didn’t grab me…my client list is full (mendacious)…
Actually, no - you’re right, it is hard to write a rejection letter that is both honest and tactful….
But why am I putting myself through all of this? Why am I putting myself forward for endless rejection? Is it time to just give up now and live a muffled kind of half-life, inured against pain? (And, yes, I do know that there are many things more painful, in life, than a rejection letter from an agent, thanks.)
Why don’t I just give up? There are a few reasons:
- I love writing and feel that I have something to say.
- I have a kernel - a little nugget of self-belief. I’ve always loved reading and sometimes, when I review something I've written and put aside for a while, I think - ‘This is actually quite good’. I realise that loving to read books isn’t enough to make you a good writer (otherwise people who watched a lot of sport would be good at football), but I do feel that I can look at my stuff objectively and say that’s it’s as good as anything else out there. That may sound arrogant but it’s true. (You may be reading this and thinking - She’s deluded, maybe she should just admit defeat and give up as it’s obvious she’s not good enough to make a living out of this, otherwise she’d have been picked up by now. And yes, I’ve had those thoughts myself.)
- This is my thing, my goal, the dream that keeps me going, keeps me trying, keeps me living. Each rejection cuts me down, temporarily, but I always get up again.
Then, there was that one industry person who said that he loved my writing and that it made him laugh out loud. But what if he was just being nice? Tactful? Letting me down easily. Is it like dating (casting my mind into the dim and murky past) where you meet someone and you get on really well and they seem to be really into you but then they don’t call and they ghost you...? Was the editor I met just not very comfortable with critiquing so he just covered this up with loads of positivity?? But at the time he seemed so enthusiastic and he really seemed to get what I was trying to impart….argh, argh, argh!!!!
The other day, author Joanne Chocolat Harris wrote ten tweets about self-doubt. She does these series of tweets about writing, periodically, and they are often very helpful.
This was one of the most encouraging and inspiring of those #tentweets:
She also retweeted this:
So, thanks Joanne and Julia Carpenter (from the tweet)! I’ll keep ploughing on!*
*Disclaimer - I'm not comparing myself to Jordan Peele or Joanne Harris, just using the quotes for inspiration.
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