I must confess, I did something a bit risky, that could have ended up with egg all over my sorry face last month.
Having finished the first draft of the novel in mid-February, I’d got the first three chapters polished to a reasonable state within a couple of weeks. Around the same time, I started researching agents. Most said they took at least 6–12 weeks to respond, so I thought, as they only need the first three chapters, why not start sending it out already? I’d found four agents who were open to submissions, so I duly set about writing bios and synopses and whathaveyou.
My logic was that it would give me the impetus to keep going with the rewrites, knowing that an agent could come back at any moment, such was the brilliance of my prose*. If any agents should come back before I’d got the rest of the book into shipshape condition, I’d just drop everything and get the damn thing to a place I was happy with. Even if it meant working through the night.
Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. But it was close. It took a lot longer than I thought it would to clean up the rest of the novel. I finally finished (well, abandoned for now, pending feedback) last Monday with an epic 14-hour session. That very day, I got my first rejection email (not a good fit for their list — so it goes).
Then yesterday came the second rejection. I liked this one a lot more. The agent felt that, although epic fantasy wasn’t their thing, the premise was strong, and it should get picked up somewhere. That put me in a good mood for the weekend.
I remember, years ago, reading about adopting the mindset of trying to get as many rejections as you can. If you aimed to get 100 rejections, the chances were you wouldn’t be far off getting accepted. I’m not sure that I entirely buy this mentality. It seems to play on the idea of the law of averages, which any A-level statistics student could tell you**, doesn’t really exist. If your story is terrible, it’s going to take a pretty desperate or silly agent to pick it up.
Also, if you focus on rejection, you’re programming your subconscious to expect rejection. This may mean you inadvertently start self-sabotaging your efforts. Not a great plan.
So, as much as it might help you cope with the rejections, I wouldn’t recommend it as a philosophy. If you’re getting numerous rejections, look at your material. Make it better. Sell it better.
I’ve sent it round to a couple more agents this week. Let’s see what happens.
If you like fun fantasy reads, there’s quite a few, including one from yours truly, on this fine list of fantasy books on Kindle Unlimited.
*Hubris, gotta love it!
**Grade C — my best A-level result!