Same Old Song and Dance

I thought I'd go through my list of rejection letters today (those that I still have around -- the responses via snail mail were long ago trashed) and look at the reasoning for my rejection thus far. Let's go!

1. "I don’t feel it is one for me."
2. "We’re afraid your project does not seem right for our list."
3. "I suspect I wouldn't be the best fit."
4. "I’m afraid this isn’t for me."
5. "Unfortunately your book does not seem like one we could successfully represent at this time."
6. "I'm afraid your work is not the right fit for us at this time, and we encourage you to continue editing and querying other agencies."
7. "I’m sorry to say that we didn’t think it was the right fit for our list, so we have decided to pass." (This one came from an agent who read the full thing, too.)
8. "I don't think I'd be the best match in this instance."
9. "We can assure you that your query was given every consideration, however, we are unable to offer representation at this time."
10. "Unfortunately, however, this project doesn’t sound right for me."
11. "After careful review, I have decided that the book you propose is not one I feel I could successfully represent, and thus, I will not be able to work with you on this project."
12. "I read and consider each query carefully and while yours is not exactly what I am looking for,  I would certainly encourage you  keep trying."
13. "It is not a good fit for me, but I wish you the best of luck."
14. "I regret to say that I don’t feel that I’m the most appropriate agent for your work."

Almost all of these were followed up with "This is a highly subjective business, and this is only one opinion. Good luck, send out more letters, etc., etc."

I only had one response -- which I'm not going to print in full here -- that had anything helpful to say.

It almost seems unfair that we labor over a project for however long it takes to write it (two years in my case), and then spend a significant chunk of time researching literary agents and finding out about their tastes, pet peeves, favorite colors, the alignment of the stars at the precise moment of their birth, and their preferred letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, only to be dismissed with the exact same response 95% of the time.

I absolutely recognize that we only have one project to worry about while agents have 15,000 per year to consider. I completely understand that they are only one person dealing with a deluge of email, and that there's often just one X factor about the novel that's not clicking for them. I know this, I understand this, I sympathize with the amount of work they have to do -- but my book is not just a number to me. I wish it were treated more than that sometimes.

The Slog

There is a reason why most writers don't keep a blog while they're in the process of writing a book. Neil Gaiman said it best when he explained the reasoning behind starting a blog after his novel, American Gods, was finished:

"It was a bit like wrestling a bear. Some days I was on top. Most days, the bear was on top. So you missed watching an author staring in bafflement as the manuscript got longer and longer, and the deadlines flew about like dry leaves in a gale, and the book remained unfinished."

Boy, do I know the feeling, Neil.

I've set myself a quasi-impossible goal for Seaquel. I turn 21 in 22 days; I want to finish Seaquel on September 8th, so I get to brag about how I wrote three novels before I turned 21. Is that greedy? I can already say I wrote two novels before I turned 20. Let's round it off with three before 21.

Of course, that means I have 22 days to write the last third of Seaquel. It's not impossible. I wrote the second half of Seafear in three weeks, in a fit of creative energy. I wrote 100 pages of Seaquel in about three days last month. It can be done, and now's the best time for that -- I don't have school until September 1, and unless I get a phone call in the next few weeks from one of the jobs I applied for, I'll be completely free.

Right now I'm being dogged by the existential questions I assume every other unpublished writer deals with: Is this really what I'm meant to do? How do I know this book is good enough? I submitted my 28th query letter tonight, so I now have six agents from whom I'm waiting to hear. I'm 300 pages into the sequel of a book for which I haven't yet found representation; it could all end up being a monumental waste of time.

Except it's not, because I'm not doing it, in the long run, to get published. Yes, it's been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember to pull my own books off the shelf at a bookstore, to be a published author, to have readers -- God, I can't even attract readers to my blog, how can I get people reading my book? -- and to have a fancy-dancy author website. Every time I go into a bookstore, I find myself wandering over to the YA section, spotting the "Smiths," and looking for where my books could one day be. But I'm not doing it for that; I'm doing it because I love to tell stories, and I love to write, and this is a story that I very much want to tell.

It's a slog, and it's hard to explain to people who aren't writers. I sound crazy when I talk about it to my friends now: "Oh no, I'm not a published writer at all, I don't have representation. What's that? Yes, this will be the third book I've written." And good God, a lot of people don't even like to read. When I'm meeting new people with my best friend, and the topic of hobbies comes up, I say I like to write and that I've written two books; he says he break dances. Everyone thinks his hobby is cooler. I can't even get my own parents to read my book, but for some reason, I keep on doing it. I write, and I keep on trying to get published. I try my damndest, because I can't not write.

I don't know if that makes me stupid or if it makes me admirable. There's a fine line between the two.

One Year

A year ago, I began submitting Seafear to literary agents for potential representation.

In that time span, I have written to 27 different literary agents, most of them based in New York City. I have heard back from 14 agents, most of them with form rejections. Two agents, one based in New York and one based in San Diego, requested the full manuscript of my book. Only one had anything helpful to say about it, the other just said it wasn't "right" for his list.

It has been an incredibly frustrating slog. It has drained my confidence; there are days when I doubt my book is up to anything resembling snuff. It has left me feeling more elated than I've ever really felt in my life -- the first time an agent asked to read my full manuscript, I felt like I might just be doing something right.

I've sometimes felt like I have no support in this endeavor. My parents, though they fostered my immense love of reading and books, seem to regard my writing as a distraction from my studies in college and my potential future as a lawyer. I gave them one of the two hard copies of Seafear I have, back in May, and they haven't been bothered to read it yet. That certainly hurts.

I've had friends ask me what my book is about, get interested, and then suddenly stop caring when I show them the manuscript. That hurts, too; insincerity is frustrating. But I've also had friends -- a sizable group of them, actually -- who have read Seafear, have told me what they liked and what they didn't, and have been genuinely enthused about what I'm trying to do.

I've been told I should try and write something "more publishable," or that I should stop "pretending to be J.K. Rowling or James Patterson" and write something "more original." I've been told I've written a Pirates of the Caribbean rip-off, I've been told I've written a good book, I've been told I've written a great book.

And still I go on. I am 65,000 words into a sequel to Seafear; this is a story I want to tell, this is the story I am telling. I have lived with these characters and this world for two years now, and I'm not willing to give it up. I've put too much of myself into this, and I believe I've written a good read. No, it's not going to be put in the great Western Canon; I am not by any stretch of the words a superb writer. But I'm decent, decent enough to attract some attention, and I'm not going to give that up.

This novel will get published.