If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may already know I finished the rough draft of my upcoming novel at the end of March of this year. I have begun revising and editing my novel and am currently working on chapter nine.

However, at the encouragement and urging of a writer friend, I wrote a proposal for my completed novel and revised and edited the first three chapters, added a query letter and sent it out to an agent. Then I tried to forget about it for the next sixty days. I also tried not to get my hopes up, as I know most writers receive many rejections before finally acquiring an agent and/or publisher.

I will say that I was surprised, when after just a week or two, I received a brief email from the agent’s assistant informing me that they had received my Book Proposal and would review it. I hadn’t expected that.

Then in early June there was an email in my inbox from the agent’s assistant. I was nervous about opening it, and after a brief pause, clicked to open it. As I read what was written, I took it as a rejection, felt hurt, posted on my Facebook Writer page that I had received my first rejection and gave myself twenty-four hours before writing or revising anything.

On June thirteenth, one of my closest writer friends was in the area and we met for lunch. At the time, she was preparing for her first published book to be released, so I printed a copy of my rejection email letter and took it along to show to her. She was glad that I had brought it because she had recently been to a writers’ conference where she attended a session about rejection letters.

After reading my rejection letter, she was really excited. She said, “This is not a rejection!” She proceeded to tell me there are three types of rejections: 1) a form letter; 2) a flat “no” with no other information; or 3) you simply never hear back from them at all.

Well, my “rejection” letter was none of the above. My letter states that “there is much to recommend in your story, and we can see your writing talent.” Then they state two things they didn’t like about my story, and end with “Because of your talent, we’d be happy to see other projects from you in the future”. Therefore, my friend said, “you should be celebrating. This is not a rejection, and I’ve been told that if you really want to try to get in with an agent who sends you this kind of information, you can revise the story, changing the things they didn’t like, and after a year, resend it to them. Or since they are willing to look at another story you write, write another one and send it.”

Her excitement and enthusiasm were catching, and what she said made a lot of sense, so I felt a lot better about the letter.

What did I decide to do in regard to my writing?

I decided that I am not going to send anything to any agent again until I finish my revision and edits on this novel and get it edited by an editor. Then I will rewrite my synopsis and send a proposal out again. I’m hoping to finish it and send it before another year passes so I wouldn’t be sending it to the same agent. Besides, one of the two things the email stated that they didn’t like is one thing I am unwilling to change because I would have to start the story all over from a completely different character’s perspective and that would change the entire story.

One thing that you will find whenever I get this novel (and any future novels) published, if you choose to read them, is that I do not write formulaic romance. I don’t know why that should be a problem, when one of the things an agent or publisher always wants to know is “what makes your book different from the others in the genre”.

I’ll keep you posted on this writing journey I am on.

Thanks for reading!