Let me clearly state that that exclamation mark is supposed to show excitement not frustration or awe (that anyone could reject me I mean). Let's be honest, I'm not at the point in my career as a writer (do you have a career as a writer if you've not made any money off of it yet?) where I'm well known enough, good enough, or in any way except to get accepted by everyone. My only hope is that I do get accepted by one single person.
That being said, I should probably explain why the exclamation mark is meant to show excitement.
I've been researching the process of publishing a book quite a bit lately. My book The Criminal (which will be the first in a series of seven called Once Upon a Tome) is fully written and though I am still continuing to polish it and make it better every day, I am working towards publishing it.
Having found that the next step is to get an agent (I thought I was supposed to just send it off to publishers on my own but I apparently don't know anything so I'm glad I looked it up), I've been sending queries off to a few.
Until now, I've received no replies. None.
Now, I know agents are busy. They receive lots of queries from lots of people and they have to read through them all, make decisions, and reply. In all honesty, it hasn't really been that long since I sent the queries off. But as a writer just starting off, not knowing what I was doing, I was beginning to get a little worried I was doing it wrong.
Perhaps I sent the emails to the wrong addresses.
Perhaps my query was not correctly formatted.
Perhaps I should have put something different in the subject line.
But no, I must have been doing it right because I got a rejection letter!
you can perhaps see the reason for my excitement now. The letter (well, really it was an email not a letter but you get the point I think) was a confirmation that I was doing things right.
But there were other reasons for my excitement as well.
See, I don't know if any of you are writers so you may not understand the feeling but I'll try to explain it to you. When I first began to write, mostly it was for fun. I had an idea in my head, so I put it on paper. Then I began to have this dream of someday having such an amazing idea on my head that I would be able to really lay it all out on paper. And then maybe print that paper out more than once, maybe more than twice, maybe a hundred or a thousand times for people all around the world to read (if you didn't pick up on it I am talking about my dream of someday publishing a book). Now at first, that dream was far off. My ideas were, well, pathetic, and they never lasted long when I tried to put them on paper. But as I continued to work on that dream I stumbled upon the idea for The Criminal (actually if you read my previous post Once Upon a Tome, you would know I didn't start with The Criminal but just go with me here). And as I finished the book I thought, wow, maybe this dream could become a reality. But hoping that a dream could become a reality is easy when it's far off and much harder when it comes up close.
When I began writing queries to agents the wonder of the dream began to overtake me. The possibility that maybe it could happen was there right in front of me. But as I received that rejection letter, it was like I was entering the world of writing, leaving the world of writing for nothing or just for fun.
Writing will always be fun. I will always do it because I enjoy it because the ideas that swirl around in my head, the worlds of werewolves and princesses and sword fights and 1/4 werewolf sword-fighting princesses just need to be put on a page. But now it feels real. Now it feels like I can achieve that dream I've been going after since I was 12.
Albert Einstein once said "I am thankful to all those who said no to me. It's because of them, I did it myself." Now, I cannot do this myself. I do not have that skill and I do not know the world of writing well enough to get from where I am now to where I want to be alone. But, I am thankful to those who say no. It is because of them that I will find the person who will be able to do the best for me and get me to where I want to be.
So let's celebrate! I got a rejection letter!
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