Rejection—it’s something we all have to experience, especially if you’re a writer. Unfortunately, it comes with the profession. But, believe it or not, rejection can be a POSITIVE thing.

Whether you’ve submitted pieces to magazines, entered writing contests, queried agents and publishers, or just gotten a bad review on your already published work—chances are, if you write, you’ve experienced some form of rejection.

I think you all know I’m pursuing traditional publishing. Or shall I say, I’ve wanted to pursue traditional publishing all my life. But let’s be real, guys, the publishing industry is a scary place. The immense amount of work to get a manuscript even sort of ready to pursue that avenue is overwhelming enough. But then there’s searching for literary agents, making a query letter, actually querying, possibly doing this for years with rejection after rejection. Revising your manuscript over and over and trying again. Then, once you’ve finally snagged an agent, you still have a number of gatekeepers in the publishing houses to get through, with more rejections and critiques piling on.

It’s exhausted. It’s terrifying. There’s a reason I’ve been procrastinating the process.

But, in the past few years, I’ve been exhausted with myself. I keep saying I want to be a published author but, guess what? That requires actually pursuing publishing in some form or fashion. Novel idea, I know. (See what I did there?) So instead of starting yet another first draft of a new shiny book idea, I sat myself down, took one of my first drafts, and started editing it.

Nearly five drafts later, I finally had a polished manuscript that, for the first time, I felt like was worthy of querying. And it felt good. Really, really good. Not only did I discover editing was not nearly as scary as I feared, but the satisfaction of turning a disastrous first draft into something worth reading was priceless.

Now to do something with it.

Enter Realm Makers 2018—my first ever writers conference. The big perk of writers conferences is that you get a chance to pitch your book face-to-face with an agent. You bypass the slush piles of emails and can have a one-on-one to really show the agent what you’re made of. Pretty epic.

And TERRIFYING.

I’m not super comfortable talking about my books face-to-face with my own family and friends. Now I was going to do it with an actual agent? I got ill just thinking about it. But also? Excited. Because, at last, I had the chance to actually make progress toward my dream of being published. I couldn’t let fear keep holding me back.

So, after a gazillion hours of research on pitching, and having a existential crisis or three, I went to Realm Makers and pitched my book to two agents and had another edit the first ten pages.

And it wasn’t entirely disastrous. In fact, it was rather encouraging.

I had never before had a professional look over my work. I had no clue if the idea even was publishable. But the one who edited the ten pages had very little to critique, and said she liked my writing style. And the agents I pitched to were quite intrigued by the idea. One even invited me to send my proposal to him any time.

*big sigh of relief*

This book I had spent a good five years on didn’t make the professionals turn up their noses. They said fairy tale retellings still sold well, and seemed quite interested by the premise.

With all the wonderful advice and knowledge I gained from the classes I took at Realm Makers, I went back home and soon started revising Burning Thorns one more time.

Then Realm Makers rolled around again, and this go round I was feeling (slightly) less terrified of pitching.

When my time slot came for an agent I was particularly excited to pitch to, I sat down, went through my book spiel, and her eyes lit up. And my heart did a little trill at her enthusiasm.

My heart did a big trill when she said, “I’m going to put you to work.”

Me: O___O “Okay.”

She said, “I want you to send me your manuscript.”

Me, being the suave, smooth talker I am, did a double take and said, “My whole manuscript?”

Good times, good times.

Long story short, I walked away from that pitch meeting floating on air. I quickly got to work when I came home from the conference, doing last minute polishing on Burning Thorns, a gazillion more hours on querying etiquette and, at last, sent the whole thing off. To an actual agent. My full book.

*cue the waiting game*

On December 19th, I was watching Thor with my sister when my phone pinged with an email notification. It was the agent.

Heart flying 289384 miles an hour, I opened the email and…

It was a rejection.

My initial reaction was my heart sinking to my stomach, tears threatening to come, and my brain pouring out a stream of reasonable thoughts like: “You’re a failure.” “Why do you even bother?” “You just waste your time.” “Your book is such trash.” “LOSERRR.”

But then I slept on it and, the next morning, read the email again.

And truth be told? It was a really encouraging rejection letter. She said I was an “exceptionally talented writer and she loved SO much about the book. She just didn’t fall in love with it quite enough to take it on in such a saturated market.” But she “genuinely adored my voice and would be honored to take a look at anything else with my name on it.”

I mean, as far as first rejection letters go, that wasn’t a bad one! So my brain calmed itself and came to much more solid conclusions.

IT’S OKAY. It’s normal. Who’s ever heard of getting signed with the first agent they ever queried to? That NEVER happens. This is just part of being a writer. And she liked my writing. I wasn’t a failure!

But the most comforting thought of all:

I have my first rejection letter.

Yes, that may seem like a strange comforting thought, but as I stared at that thing in my inbox, a hint of satisfaction stirred within me.

The reason I had never gotten a rejection letter before was because I had never queried before. I had never been brave enough to put my work out there, to do the effort that involves getting published. But that rejection from an actual agent sitting in my inbox proved that I had done it. I had made progress toward my dream. Finally.

And it made me want to keep going.

I want more rejection letters, I want my inbox to be filled to the brim with proof that I am brave enough to chase my dreams, and I don’t want to stop until I’ve reached them.

So, once I had a nice Christmas break, I got busy again. I started yet more query letter research, made a Scrivener file to keep up with potential agents, formed a big list of them, made draft after draft of a query letter, tweaked the beginning of Burning Thorns some more.

And, as of just a couple of weeks ago, I now have three query letters in three different agent’s inboxes, with a whole list of more to query in a few months.

Am I going to be disappointed as the rejections roll in? Absolutely. But will I also celebrate with each one? DEFINITELY.

Here’s the thing:

Rejection just means you DID THE THING.

It means you were brave. You put your work out there. You bared your soul in order to reach the stars. And you should be so proud of that. So, so proud.

But here’s the other thing, the most important one: WE CAN’T STOP.

Stephen King nailed his first rejection letter to the wall, and then kept adding to it until his nail couldn’t hold that many letters, so he replaced it with a spike and kept going. STEPHEN KING, GUYS.

If you’re a writer, rejection comes with the territory. But what one agent or publisher or reviewer says does not echo what the entire world says. Out of the billions of people in the world, there will be people who love your stories. Yes, it is our job to produce the best work we can, but it is not our job to give up. Ever.

That rejection letter was a springboard for me. It showed me I can actually query and not, ya know, die. I can receive a rejection letter and still want to keep going. I can do hard things.

Yes, we will all get rejections, but, thankfully, there are so many more opportunities. It only takes one agent to love your story to receive that coveted acceptance letter.

And the lovely thing about writing is…it’s infinite. Maybe Burning Thorns will never find a publisher. Well, then. I’ll just try with one of my 829348 other plot bunnies. There is never any point where we have to stop. If one agent doesn’t work out, go to the next one. If one book isn’t publishable, write another one. If traditional publishing isn’t your thing, go indie, or vice versa.

God has a plan for my writing, and with each rejection letter I’ll know He’s just telling me, “I’ve got something even better. Keep going.”

He put this passion for stories in us for a reason. And though it’s hard, and time-consuming, and so very often exhausting, it’s also so worth the effort. It is honestly such an honor to be a storyteller. Stories have power—they comfort and inspire and change lives. And I feel so blessed to be a part of that.

A few querying resources:

If you’re a querying newb like me, and researching and trying to find agents, I’ve found some great resources to get your started.

• How to Write a Query Letter by Shannon Dittemore @ Go Teen Writers – This is such a great post on the basics of writing a query letter. And it’s got an example of Shannon’s own query letter that signed her an agent for her novel Angel Eyes!

• Query Shark – This website is a goldmine. An agent runs it and posts query letters with critiques on why they don’t work (or do). I spent hours reading through the blog and it helps so, so much.

• ManuscriptWishList.com – When you’re ready to look for agents, this is a fantastic website! It’s got hundreds upon hundreds of agents, with a customizable searching tool so you can find ones who are, for example, looking for YA books, and each agent has a bio there with, as the URL suggests, what they’re looking for in manuscripts. It’s great!

Querying is scary, guys. Being a WRITER is scary. Putting your heart and soul out there for the world to see and judge and critique seems crazy. But it’s those moments when someone says, “I loved it!”, when someone flails about your characters, when a reader comes to you and says your story touched their heart, that is when you know it’s worth all the rejections in the world.

Each rejection is just one more milestone. One more piece of proof that you are taking this thing seriously and refusing to let fear hold you back.

Keep writing. Keeping pursuing those dreams. Keep those stars in your eyes. You and your stories deserve it.

LET’S TALK!

Who else has plunged into the scary waters of querying? Do you have any tips or something to share? I’m still so new to this, so any resources you have, throw ‘em at me! I’d LOVE to hear your experiences and thoughts!