Dear Rejection Letters: Thanks for the Character Development

Why was my heart racing when I seen this in my email?

I woke up yesterday morning like any other day.

I thanked God.

I stretched.

Then I went for my phone and saw an email from a literary agency that I queried on February 26. My heart immediately began to race. Not out of nervousness, but out of sheer awareness that it takes way more than ten days to decide, as a literary agent, if you want to take on the project or not.

I immediately knew it was the latter.

"Thank you for allowing me to read your query, however, at this time, I am going to have to pass," the literary agent announced in a two sentence email.

How I knew I was being rejected? I just KNEW.

Because NO ONE makes it on their first try, right? Unless your work is literally THAT GOOD, in which, we as writers, would all like to think that.

When you first start querying agents, rejection letters feel deeply personal. Like the agent personally read your manuscript, sighed, and said, “Absolutely not.”

But after the fifth, tenth, or twentieth rejection, something interesting happens.

You start developing… a sense of humor about it.

There’s the Classic Form Rejection, which feels so automated you half expect a robot to pop out of your laptop and say, “Try again later.”

But here’s the strange truth: rejection letters slowly start to feel like proof that you’re actually doing the thing.

You wrote the book. You polished the manuscript. You sent the query.

And that takes courage.

Even legendary authors faced plenty of rejection. Stephen King famously stuck rejection slips on a nail in his wall, and J.K. Rowling was rejected multiple times before Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was finally published.

I had over 200 people like my comment on Threads, encouraging me with jokes and quips like "you broke the seal" and "join the club." I appreciate every last one, and knowing that I'm one step closer to that agent that wants to take a chance on me and my writing makes me feel good. But until then, I think I'll borrow a page out of Stephen King's life and stick them on the wall. Maybe with color coded post-its.

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