First Rejection from an Editor – Novel Progress!

Received an e-mail from my agent Paul Zack this past week, and when I showed it to my husband, he didn’t understand my excitement.

“But they said no,” he kept saying as I kept trying to explain how it was positive.

There’s a big difference between a good no and a turn-off-your-computer-and-hang-your-head-and-cry no. For anyone trying to publish a book, you should know what I mean.

A good no keeps you going.

A good no is encouragement.

A good no means that you aren’t crazy for doing this.

Here are the comments from the editor – the first to respond to the submissions for my novel that Zack sent out:

I’m afraid this is simply a case of enjoying the novel, but not loving it.  I think with something like this, you have to absolutely fall for Edie.  As you well know, with fiction these days we need real in-house champions, and I wouldn’t want to do it a disservice.  I am confident that Jennifer will find the perfect home for this—she’s a very talented writer with great promise.

So I skimmed over the part that she didn’t love it and I focused on the positives to stroke my ego – essential to staying disciplined with writing!

But beyond the editor’s kind words, what really keeps me going it knowing that someone has read my work. That it is getting out there. A rejection is still progress.

The end goal is to share, to get what’s in my head and heart on the page and translate them into something that connects with others. It’s what drives writers crazy and is essential to capturing the human experience.