Flu and Failure and F*ck You, Oh My!

So after contracting some sort of mysterious stomach bug, I'm back on track. It turns out every time I sat down at the computer to write about my current agent submissions, my stomach bug (that was finally gone last week) mysteriously reappeared. I guess when I tried typing "rejection", my stomach would flip-flop back into nausea and my palms would sweat and my mouth would run dry. So I gave up on blogging for a week or so.

So yeah, I'm back to discussing what a pain in the ass this whole process is. I was sent a form letter rejection in the mail the other day, claiming "as you know, fiction is extremely difficult to sell these days," (no shit, Sherlock), and although I enjoyed your story (I'm sure you only read 2 pages), I'm afraid (they're all afraid-why are they afraid? That I'm gonna go ape-shit on their ass after they reject me?) that I'm not the best representative for your work. I wish you luck (yeah, yeah. No, you don't. You won't even remember me after you put the postage on the envelope) in your career. (Career? CAREER? If I had a career I wouldn't need you to be my frickin' agent!)

You know, I gotta say, that for all the work that I put into my own queries that are sent to these agents, choosing my words carefully, placing that stamp on my SASE so meticulously, making sure the mailing is done just right- these agents sure as hell don't spend a lot of time choosing their words carefully for struggling writers.

GRRRRRR!!!!! I'm over it. Don't worry. It only took 3 glasses of wine for that rejection not to sting anymore. But I'm cool. I still have a partial out, and I still have 6 other queries on peoples' desks. And after those avenues are exhausted, I still have other contacts. I'm just getting tired of it. And besides, I'm having more fun working on manuscript #2. It's reminding me that my writing is what I love. Not needing other people to tell me that they love my writing. I love it. And that's plenty enough for me.

Stay tuned for more agent bashing (too bad I'm not on Twitter-can anyone say "#query postings are MEAN?"). To all those agents who now think it's fun to real-time reject and make fun of the queries that they receieve and post it for the world to see, a big F YOU.