Rejection Revisited

Cripes, another rejection letter today--from a query sent out in 2006, so old I had consigned it to the "never gonna here from this agent" list. Believe it or not, I have such a list and for World of Mirrors it contains 17 agents.

World of Mirrors now has 73 rejections, including the "aint' never" queries.
Promiscuous Mode has 43.

I took a look back in history and The Shadow Warriors only had 39 rejections before I found an e-publisher with an editor, a copy-editor, a cover-designer and all that good stuff. Too bad they were underfunded and disorganized. The first and forever on the closet shelf book, Witness Be Wary, has about 40 rejections. They're in a file drawer, I guess. There's something about the number 40, be it age or rejections that strikes terror. At a prior Edgars Week in NYC I talked to an author who was rejected 113 times before he finally found an agent, and she sold his book. You gotta have the right stuff, which means persistence.

Still, sometimes, and this has been one of those weeks, persistence seems like stupidity, like cluelessness, like the inability to face facts. I've never been a Pollyanna-ish person. Does anyone remember Pollyanna? An upbeat young lady who never got down, who played something called the "glad game." Sheesh! I think I'll Google Pollyanna.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna

In case you weren't doing math, the total rejections for 4 novels are at 195. It's a wonder I can still sit here and write a sentence. Last night I cobbled together a new beginning for Festival Madness. Three short paragraphs that set the scene. I've noticed that most books start with "telling," not showing. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, I was a posthumous child, the sea is high again today, and so forth. As in Tell Me A Story. Never heard anyone say, "show me a story." Of course, one shows in the telling, but this showing business is kind of out of control. If you want to show everything, write poetry. Someones a couple of good telling paragraphs can do the work of whole scenes of showing.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Ponder that for a while.

Grapeshot