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Jeopardy!
Topic Started: Sep 4 2013, 09:56 PM (248 Views)
Jessi
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DOES SOMETHING

For those of you who don’t know, I was a contributor on Best Damn Creative Writing Blog. They approached me after having read my blog and thought that I’d be a good fit for their “aspiring writers” section. One of the first articles I wrote came about after submitting ten or thirty query letters to various agencies… and this was my thought process while I waited for responses…

Quote:
 
For the past week, the Jeopardy theme song has been playing on constant repeat in my head. Of course, it paused for half a second while I read a form rejection from one agency, but it picked right back up again in full force as soon as I deleted that agency's lame attempt at telling me they overlooked my query carefully.

I know, spoil sport, sore about the rejection, yadda, yadda. Not quite. Actually, I found myself relieved at receiving a form rejection from a big agency and not a letter that read, “Excuse me, Miss [redacted], but you are out of your damn mind. Crazy. We will be giving your information to all of our little publisher friends and you will never have a shot at a big novel deal in this universe as long as you shall live.”

Yes, I'd rather take the impersonal, can't-even-squeeze-my-first-name-in-there-somewhere, form rejection. Even if it does feel like a slap in the face, at least there's no added salt in the wound such as, “My agency is passing on your novel because, let's face it, it's stupid.” My biggest fear through this whole process is being blacklisted as The Crazy One That Actually Thinks She Makes Sense. Plausible sense of fear when you've heard things like, “Oh, it's just a Jessi-ism” your whole life. Oh yes, my name got turned into the form of a belief system for sheer disbelief over some of the ridiculousness that comes out of my imaginative little mind.

So, while the Jeopardy theme song is playing in my head like the steady thrumming of a guitar, there's also a voice that grows louder as the time passes. It's whispering things like “you can't really believe that an agent is going to find your story the best out of the 500 others they receive, can you? No, you can barely pass your query letter off as legible, much less enticing. Beg your boss for a raise, kiddo.”

As the Jeopardy theme song is do-do-do-ing away, and the voice is hissing bitter nothings in my ear, there's this itty, bitty little light that's acting as a beacon for my optimism. Every time I begin to doubt my abilities as an author, it shines brightly as if to say, “Hey, sunshine, look at how awesome you really are! You've written 42 stories, had them published online, and have amassed a fan-base for them. And, if that isn't good enough, don't you have that article to write for BDCWB?”

And that, ladies and gentleman, is how one author, ridden with both self-doubt and optimism, deals with the vulnerable process of querying the best agents in the business.


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