I’m finally a real writer

Well I finally got my first rejection letter and though it would have obviously been nicer to get an acceptance at least now I can stand proud and say I’m a writer.  I could have said that before, but now I can say I’ve sent my work out to real honest-to-goodness professionals and been turned down just like all the world’s greatest authors.

Here is the text of the letter so you can see what you might expect from your own query (names changed to protect the innocent):

Dear Surrey,

Thank you so much for sharing THE WEST QUEEN with me. Though I think you have an interesting story here, I didn’t quite fall in love with it in the way that I need to in order to take it on. In this subjective industry, I’m sure another agent will feel differently, and I wish you the best of luck on your writing journey.

Warmest,
Friendly Agent Who Took The Time To Respond.

 

So to that agent I say thank you for letting me know you weren’t interested.  I happen to know this agent received a vast number of queries at the same time as mine so it doesn’t surprise me I didn’t get anything more specific.  What is nice is that this agent was able to even take the time to hit reply to my query at all.  (The agent tweeted that they got around 400 queries in the same week as mine so…)

I’m now going to send my query out to another batch of agents.  Probably around five this time.  I probably don’t want to send out too many in one hit as the industry is a small one and I have the feeling that flooding all agents with my work will work against me rather than for me.

Anyway, back to writing.