Something tells me she’s not interested.

Still, I thought about sending yet another follow up query, just in case she somehow didn’t get the first two, but then I thought that would just be really, really annoying and lump me into the category of “Writer Without a Clue; Therefore to Be Mocked as well as Rejected.”

I’ve been rejected, plenty of times. But I’d rather not be mocked.

So I kept my follow up query to my follow up query to myself.

Which means it’s the end of the line, folks. Agent #17 was the last agent I queried about my novel before deciding that a) I would do another round of revisions before sending out another query and b) now is not the time for me to be trying to find an agent anyway.

I started this agent query process just over a year ago. When I began, I honestly thought I’d have found an agent by now. I was so naive–despite the fact that I’d been reading agent blogs and knew the odds were against me. But for some reason I thought I’d beat those odds. I figured if I behaved professionally and presented a polished project, how hard could it be?

Hmm. Let me think about that for a second. Here’s the answer, braniac: hard. Very, very hard.

Now, I’m probably still naive, but at least next time I go to start this process up again, I’ll know to expect it to take several dozen queries and probably several dozen months, too.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep practicing my craft and revising my novel. Eventually, something will give. Someday.

You have to be a genius of compression, of making one word say three things, of conveying a whole lot in a few words, just to query this agency.

And unfortunately, I’m not. It takes me a lot of time to reign in my verbosity and “write tight” as the saying goes. I should have taken that time. I should have written less about my story (um, really?) and more about how I envision marketing this book (it’s a pretty awesome marketing plan, though it might kill me to implement it, introvert that I am).

Perhaps I should even have pointed out, “hey, in case you didn’t get it, weaving together two stories about saints and dragons is what makes my book unique!” But I thought that might be insulting their intelligence, so I left it out. I figured they’d get it without my telling them.

Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. Either way, they rejected me – whoops! Freudian slip there, folks! I mean, they rejected my manuscript by non-response. The month it takes them to respond is more than up, and I’ve not heard. Honestly, I’d rather get a super formy rejection.

Well, not quite. Once, I got a checklist rejection that looked like it had been photocopied eight years earlier from a mimeographed copy. “Dear (my name scrawled here), Thank you for your submission. We regret to say we can’t use it for the following reasons…”

Then followed a dozen reasons why a given submission might not be acceptable. Cheerily for me, only two of the 12 reasons were checked, and neither of them was “You suck.” I was a novice then and found this tawdry little letter offensive. So I threw it in the recycle bin. Oh, how I wish I’d kept it. Now, I’d frame it. It was that grand.

Anyhoo, back to Agent #15. Her formy form letter said what such letters always say. Thank you…not for us…good luck.

I wasn’t expecting a positive response from this agent (so why, I ask myself now, did I send the query? Have I become suddenly masochistic?), so my heart didn’t break when the form letter came. I’m not even surprised that she didn’t like my ten sample pages, which I obediently pasted into the body of my email per the agency’s submission guidelines.

In fact, if an agent ever tells me they like my sample pages and want to see more, I’ll probably pass out from shock. Really? You would? Are you sure?

This is why writers are seen as being rather paranoid and insecure – because we deal with rejection on an almost daily basis. After a while, even if you believe in your writing, you start to wonder if you should, or if maybe you should just check yourself into a rehab center for the severely delusional.

Clearly it was the latter. Clearly this was a stunningly difficult decision. Clearly, she would have requested a partial if…

If what? Honestly, I have no idea. When I started this whole blogging-about-my-agent-search thing, I think I assumed that I’d find an agent relatively quickly. After all, I’m shopping around a polished novel. Well, apparently a lot of other people are, too, and either their novels are better than mine or their query letters are. Or both.

(And I suppose, if I found an agent after a mere ten months of submitting queries, that would be considered quickly, since the publishing world moves at the pace of a two-toed sloth crossing a glacier.)

The strange thing is, I almost don’t care that I got this rejection. All things being equal, of course, I’d rather she asked for a partial, but when I reflected on my day to share my highlight and my lowlight with my family at dinner last night, I didn’t think to name this as my lowlight. Crazy, I know, but it didn’t even occur to me. I must be growing up. Or growing a thick skin. I suppose that’s one thing repeated rejection will do for you: you get so used to it that it no longer surprises, let alone bothers, you.

At least that’s my perky theory. We’ll see if I’m right when Agent #15’s rejection comes rolling in.

Sounds right up my alley.

Or not. I guess maybe I don’t evoke the foreign environment of my novel perfectly. Or maybe I’m not delving into relationships with enough complexity. Not that you can tell that from the query or the first page that I sent. Or maybe you can.

Or maybe Agent #13 got 154 queries on the same day she got mine. Maybe she skimmed it. Maybe she had a headache. Maybe the query she read right before she read mine made her fingers tingle, it was that good, and mine sounded lame in comparison.

Maybe mine is lame. I don’t think it is. But what do I know? I’m just a writer sipping coffee.

Seriously, I sometimes wonder if I’m doing something wrong. I’m trying to play by the rules here, people, but the rules don’t seem to be helping me.

Oh wait.

I just remembered: Finding an Agent rule 101.26.4g stipulates that you have to send at least 35 queries and receive 34 rejections before you get an offer of representation. Well, hallelujah! I’m a third of the way there! (I hope.)

Well. I’m not dancing anymore. Agent #11 sent me a rejection letter.

After 18 rejections of this project (I’ll be writing about some of the others in coming weeks), I’m getting pretty thick-skinned, so I was surprised by how disappointed I was by this rejection, by how much it shook my confidence and made me question whether my novel was any good.

So I went back and reread the 15 pages I sent to Agent #11. They were pretty good. A little stale, but I chalked that up to my having read them so many times in the past six months. And, with the possible exception of Jane Austen, everything gets stale after dozens of reads in a matter of months. Right? (That is right, isn’t it? It’s not just my writing?)

I’d revise those pages, only the rejection letter wasn’t specific enough to help me realize what would make them better. I could fiddle endlessly in a blind attempt to make the story more palatable to this agent, but that would likely only succeed in alienating another agent, so at this point, I’ve decided to leave well enough alone.

I have one more partial out and one more agent to query, an agent to whom I was referred two days after I got Agent #11’s rejection (how’s that for providential?).

Granted, I don’t hold out a lot of hope for either of these options, but at least they’re out there, providing a ray of possibility in the gloom of publishing purgatory. (Insert eye-rolling here.)

I sent this query letter (a new one, by the way, spit polished by the fabuloso ladies in my critique group) without doing all the research I should have. I knew this agent is actively building her client list, especially for YA, and that she likes books similar to mine, at least in theory. She wrote that she’s interested in mature YA books that cross genres and reinvent popular stories with an engaging new twist, especially when there’s a historical and/or speculative element involved. Sounds like a perfect fit, right?

Well, apparently not. She sent me a very kind rejection letter.

Which isn’t really surprising. Since I hadn’t actually read any of the novels she represents, how would I know what her take on what constitutes “engaging” or even “popular” is?

I confess part of what kept me from doing the research I should have done is a sense that it doesn’t really matter. I don’t know this woman from Eve. She doesn’t know me from Eve. Reading a partial is a lot of work, takes a lot of time. So unless my query letter knocked her socks off, why would she invest all that time and energy?

And it clearly didn’t knock her socks off. Which makes me wonder if it will knock anyone’s socks off. Or if I will just end up with another slough of rejections…

I know this query process works for people. I just don’t actually know anyone who’s found their agent this way without some sort of personal connection like meeting them at a conference or being referred by someone who knows them. In fact, the two partials I have out now are because of personal connections: I know someone who knows an agent. Now that’s food for thought, isn’t it?

If you’re a writer who found your agent through the query process, without having met them or been referred to them prior to sending your query, well, I really want to hear from you!

I got her email Friday morning. That’s right: you all were reading about how painful this Summer of Rejection has been, how despondent I felt after racking up more than 20 rejections in just three months (y’all aren’t seeing the magazine rejections and/or non-responses I’m getting – or, um, not getting), and I was reading the most beautiful email ever penned, er, typed.

She wrote, “I would be pleased to review your project further.” Are there any more felicitous words in the English language? (Okay, so “I love you” is a pretty close second.)

Hallelujah! Weeping shall endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

I didn’t. The agency’s website says they’ll call or email within two weeks. Yesterday marked two weeks.

When I sent the query, I wrote on the top of my printed copy, “Emailed August 19.” Last night, under that, I wrote, “September 3, no response. Rejection assumed.”

Then I cried. And cried. And cried.

I don’t think my tears were about this agent, really. They were about the whole process, the constant risking of my heart’s desire with total strangers, the hoping and then having my hopes dashed, over and over.

When I started down this path, I knew that I would encounter rejection. I knew I would probably encounter a lot of it. But I didn’t understand what that meant, how much it would hurt, how it would make me wonder if my beautiful novel was really garbage and I’m just too blind or stupid to see it. I’d read angry writers’ rants about the publishing business, about agents, about the opacity and irrationality of the publication process, and I promised myself I would never be like that.

And I won’t. Not publicly. But last night, in the privacy of my own kitchen, with my husband as my only audience, I completely lost it. Every thing those writers I swore I’d never be like have said—I said it, too. I feel it, even now, and it feels true.

I will continue to be upbeat on this blog, to try to learn from my mistakes, to persevere in the face of rejection, but today I wanted to let all of you who are experiencing rejection right now; who feel the pain of it; who cry at the unfairness of it; who read blogs and articles that blithely assure you, “There’s always a market for awesome!” or “Good writing will out!,” and think bitter thoughts about how those bloggers are delusional or lying—I want you to know you’re not alone.

Rejection hurts. Repeated rejection hurts more. But hang in there with me, okay? We’ll persevere. We’ll fight bitterness and envy and despair. We’ll try to believe that good writing will out. And we’ll act like we believe it even when we don’t.

And eventually we’ll find the audience who loves our writing—starting with, please God, Agent #11.

Right?

I so desperately wanted to have another query out there – my goal is always to have two out at a time – that I stayed up way too late composing this letter, so I wasn’t thinking clearly. The letter, as I look back on it now, was sadly lacking in personal details about the agent, whom I’d actually researched. (I always do. I’m trying to increase my odds here, not kill them.) But I was so tired I didn’t communicate that clearly. Ahem. I didn’t communicate that at all.

And then she goes and gets back to me less than 12 hours later. What agent (besides Nathan Bransford) does that?

I should have waited to write the query, let alone send it, till I was less tired and, yes, less desperate.

The irony, of course, is that I now have to send another query, so that when Agent #10 gets back to me with her no-thanks, I still have someone to hope for. Not that I’m feeling particularly hopeful these days.

Rejection is rather wearing.