There was a time when I thought seriously of not posting anything on Noveltea about querying for agents and all that fun stuff until I was on the other side of the process. But then I realized y’all have been with me for the rest of the journey, so why stop now?
Yesterday after months of preparation and research I sent out my first query letter at 10:32 in the morning. Throughout the day some other things came up – like cooking and dishes and babysitting my best friend’s little girl – but for the most part I stayed up in my office, drank lost of water and coffee, kinda decided to set aside the rest of my goals for the day, and focused on researching, researching, researching, and sending queries.
I sent out my last query for the day at 10:00 (although I did continue researching for another hour and a half). I was amused to no end when I received my first rejection at 10:04, literally four minutes after I had sent the query. At first I thought the email was simply a receipt, letting me know the query had been received or that the offices were closed (I received several of those yesterday). But no, it was a real, live rejection. (And yes, I had followed the guidelines on the website.)
I took a few minutes to celebrate and sent a screenshot to several writerly friends because I figured the moment should be documented. See, I’ve decided that hopefully rejections are going to be an amazingly fun part of this journey.
Last year when I was researching the querying process nearly everyone talked about how hard it is to wait, wait, wait, and then receive rejection after rejection, after rejection. But it’s life! It’s part of what has to happen. (At least if you’re going the traditional route.)
So, I decided to make it into a game, and to celebrate a lot. For instance, I’m going to reward myself for every rejection I get. I’m also going to reward myself for every day that goes by and I don’t hear back from any agents. From the research I’ve done, that means I have a ton of rewards to look forward to.
I’ve not decided 100% on the type of rewards I’m going to give myself, but I’m fairly certain that each rejection and each day that goes by without hearing back from agents I’ll pay myself a certain amount of money or give myself a certain amount of time to work on Madalyn Emerson’s scrapbook. And yes, I realize that it sounds weird to pay myself, but there are some writerly things on Etsy and some books I would like to have, but generally wouldn’t buy. As for the scrapbook, that will have to wait for another post…. For now I’m just gonna reward myself by drinking way more coffee than normal and listening to Christmas music in January.
Have any of y’all queried? What did you do to make the process more fun?
Noveltea 
What a great way of looking at it! Not only will it (hopefully) make the rejections easier to take, it’ll also push you to get more rejections! Hopefully they’ll yield some acceptances as well. 2017 will be the year! 🙂
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Right! There’s a book called “Go For No” and the premies is for salespeople to go until they get a certain amount of rejections instead of acceptance, because that way they’ll keep going, going, going. =)
Thank you for your encouragement!
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Sounds a valuable perspective to take! Might have to utilise it myself in future.
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I hope you have fun with it!
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One positive thing I always saw in rejection is at least they took time to consider the material. Now, four minutes is not a lot of consideration, but…:-) Your positive response to the rejection is refreshing. Awesome post, Lydia. Have a wonderful Tuesday…:-)
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Haha, yep, that’s pretty much the same thing my brother said last night. 🙂
And thank you! I’m glad it can be refreshing. 🙂
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Doing a little catching up on blog reading! 🙂 You go, girl! I’m so excited and happy for you, even though you have received some rejections. That’s not the most fun part, but I know that this book is awesome and God will bless you with just the right agent in just the right time! Keep on keeping on! 😀
Have a great day!
-Bekah
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Aww, thank you, Bekah! And thank you so much for your encouragement with this project. It’s been fun sharing updates with you and being inspired to keep going. =)
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You have such a positive outlook on rejections! That’s encouraging. ^ ^ I haven’t queried, but I have pitched to a lot of edits and agents in person then submitted to them and gotten mostly rejections. XD I’m still waiting to hear back from some and I’m working on sending something back to another who wanted except they wanted one thing fixed.
storitorigrace.blogspot.com
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Aww, thank you! I’m glad it can be encouraging.
And yay for being able to pitch in person! That sounds like fun. (And a bit nerve wracking!) I hope you hear back soon!
And that’s great that one of them wanted to hear more!
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My very first query came back in a rejection after seven minutes, so I know the feeling. I have my first round of rejections on brightly colored index cards, and have started referring to them as the rejection collection. I want to collect the whole set. I don’t have nearly enough.
I do think it gets easier, as you go along, and start to see who isn’t there that you queried the first time. (What do you know, it really wasn’t me!)
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Crazy! Well, it’s good to know I”m not the only one. 🙂
And YES! I have wanted to sort and file my rejections some where. Only, I kinda got distracted on that task by being busy with the rest of life, so I haven’t really done much with it yet. Great idea though! I like it. 🙂
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