Ouch

I went home on my break today and saw that I had mail. Two rejections; one from the last batch I sent out about the Yancy novel, the other from an agent I queried over the summer. His note was pretty, with the agency's logo across the top. He apologized for the form response, then said that he reviewed my material and found that it was not anything that he wishes to work with at this time.

Ouch.

Now, I have a relative thick-skinned approach for this process. You have to or you'd give up after the second try. As you may or may not know, I've thought about giving up plenty of times. I've even gone on "breaks," from querying and from writing all together. I'm really trying to not let this one little note card get to me but after reading it, I had to sit. I usually skim rejection letters, looking for the "unfortunately"s and "pass"s and "good luck in your search"s. But I read this one. And I'm regretting it. I'm obviously not the only who has or will receive this note card. And I feel bad for those poor fools, too.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not looking for these very busy agents to coddle me in the least. I know they can't write constructive criticism for every letter or chapters they receive. That would be crazy and they'd never get anything else done. But that was just really damn harsh. I understand the process; that doesn't mean it won't sting.