Dealing with Rejection

re·ject (r-jkt)
tr.v. re·ject·ed, re·ject·ing, re·jects
1. To refuse to accept, submit to, believe, or make use of.
2. To refuse to consider or grant; deny.
3. To refuse to recognize or give affection to (a person).
4. To discard as defective or useless; throw away.
5. To spit out or vomit.
6. Medicine To resist immunologically the introduction of (a transplanted organ or tissue); fail to accept as part of one's own body.

When sending out query letters, receiving rejections is inevitable, but how you handle the rejection tells a lot about your character.

Not all forms of rejection are true rejections, I think that is the important thing to remember. After going to the writers workshops, we found out that there are three types of literary agents:

1) The ones, who after reading your query letter, don't even take the time to respond because they aren't interested via it isn't there genre, your query letter sucked, or they aren't excepting clients.

2) The second type are the agents who will respond, but what they say is limited like, "I'm sorry, but we aren't interested."

3) And then the third type of agent, are interested in your work even though they don't cover your genre or they were really fascinated with your query letter and they will respond with a somewhat rejected non-rejection, which makes you feel like you had them hook-line and sinker until you told them it was a YA novel.

"Thank you for your query, which I read with interest. Unfortunately, I am not the right agent for your work. Do not despair as another agent might feel quite differently. Thank you for considering me. I wish you the best with your writing."

Chuck Sambuchino said that if you receive the third type of agent rejection, that you are on the right track with your query letter, but the agent might not be interested in the genre.

So, I am hoping that with Age of Eden, we will receive the third type of agent response and be able to walk away from the experience with our pride still intact. Because even though it's a rejection, it still says, that they were interested in your book, but they don't handle that type of genre and they are confident that another agent would feel quite differently....so there is hope on the horizon.

And now I am stepping off of my soap box. Everyone have a safe and happy Easter!