Aha! Found the email you sent me early in November. I may not get to it tonight, because the ms takes up several files, but it's coming soon.
Here's the thing about rejection: the stories of many very successful books (and probably most less successful books, but we don't hear so much about them) include waves and waves of rejection. Clan of the Cave Bear is one example: rejected by 13 agents before agent 14 offered representation, then rejected by 18 publishers before publisher 19 bought it, then bought by hundreds of thousands of unlikely but ardent readers. Suppose, hypothetically, that the big book and the four volumes that will follow it are all eventually as successful as Jean Auel's books have been. If you want to, you can even suppose, hypothetically, that my work will, after revision, be as good as or better than hers. That still doesn't mean the first agent to read the full will be the one who wants it. And if the Shiny Young Agent doesn't want it, there's no danger of my giving up. If a decade in academia couldn't grind me down enough to make me give up on my writing, one measly little rejection from a basically kind person won't make me give up, either.
I don't even know if the SYA is the agent who could do best by me and my work. What if I accept the first agent who comes down the pike, and she turns out to be the wrong one? She's legit--I've checked her out pretty thoroughly--but legitimacy alone doesn't get the job done.
I just hope for the right thing to happen, whatever that turns out to be. I try not to make too many assumptions about what the right thing is.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 08:26 pm (UTC)Here's the thing about rejection: the stories of many very successful books (and probably most less successful books, but we don't hear so much about them) include waves and waves of rejection. Clan of the Cave Bear is one example: rejected by 13 agents before agent 14 offered representation, then rejected by 18 publishers before publisher 19 bought it, then bought by hundreds of thousands of unlikely but ardent readers. Suppose, hypothetically, that the big book and the four volumes that will follow it are all eventually as successful as Jean Auel's books have been. If you want to, you can even suppose, hypothetically, that my work will, after revision, be as good as or better than hers. That still doesn't mean the first agent to read the full will be the one who wants it. And if the Shiny Young Agent doesn't want it, there's no danger of my giving up. If a decade in academia couldn't grind me down enough to make me give up on my writing, one measly little rejection from a basically kind person won't make me give up, either.
I don't even know if the SYA is the agent who could do best by me and my work. What if I accept the first agent who comes down the pike, and she turns out to be the wrong one? She's legit--I've checked her out pretty thoroughly--but legitimacy alone doesn't get the job done.
I just hope for the right thing to happen, whatever that turns out to be. I try not to make too many assumptions about what the right thing is.