A rejection letter to cherish

Rejection letters are no fun, even if they’re nice. It’s depressing. But I got one from an agent, querying for my very first book, Truck Stop, back in 2000, that said:

“There’s no question of your ability.  I think you have a very fluid, commercial style which is remarkably polished and self-assured… I think your writing has a lot of commercial potential…”

She hadn’t liked the actual premise itself, which is why she was rejecting it… but then, she said if I hadn’t found an agent by the time I finished my second manuscript, which was well under way, she’d be happy to take a look at that!  Waaaay cool!  I’ was more about celebrating that letter than feeling bad, LOL!  To top that off, some writers whom I’d shown the rejection told me that this particular agency is top-of-the-line and rarely take beginning writers at all, that they frequently turn down *published* writers, so that I should absolutely pat myself on the back because she’d invited me to submit to them again!

Just to put the final cap on this validation (despite the fact that it was a rejection)… another writer reassured me: “Sometimes this takes years of writing to generate a rejection letter of this quality!”

I still have that rejection letter, carefully in a box with my letter from the Undiscovered Writer II contest, the first contract with the epublisher, and the first copy of the paperback, plus the long-stemmed white silk rose I got from Desert Rose Chapter of RWA for a first sale 🙂

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