I sent Agent #2 the same query letter as Agent #1 (after adding a very sincere “thank you,” of course). She requested a partial! I guess that whole thank you thing is really, really important.
To have this agent (only the second I’d queried!) request a partial is huge—it confirmed that my story is interesting and my query letter is good enough to get an agent’s attention. Whew.
So I sent off the first 30 pages of my manuscript. I knew when I sent them that if she rejected them, it would be because of the clunky structural issues that were, I cringe to admit it, apparent in those pages. I hoped that the brilliance of my story and the beauty of my prose would overcome all other considerations.
Alas, poor Yorick.
But I can honestly say I’m glad she rejected it. This way, I had a chance to rewrite the whole beginning (and big chunks of the middle, too) before I sent it to anyone else. It’ll probably get rejected again, but at least I’ll know it’s not because I included too much backstory too soon.
Sure, if she’d asked for more, that would have been great. I’d have been way more thrilled to do revisions for her than I was to do them on my own for some other as-yet-unknown agent. But my book is a lot stronger because of this rejection, and for that I’m grateful.
I am a reader (I feel about books the way some people feel about chocolate: yum), a writer (I've written a book, even: The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year), and a mother (of four). So that's what I blog about: reading, writing, and raising my kids.