How Rejection Strengthened My Writing

by Jess Costello

As a writer seeking traditional publication, I have a love-hate relationship with the querying process. It’s hard enough distilling a three-hundred-page manuscript into a couple enticing paragraphs, but then you have to leave it on a stranger’s virtual doorstep and wait as they sift through countless hopefuls just like you. Last November (2019), I got a form rejection from a query I sent in September… 2018. This agent took over a year to say, “Sorry, this isn’t right for me.” This points to a broader problem within publishing about everyone’s workload, but that’s a story for another post. 

Like many writers, I could make a book out of the rejections I’ve received from literary agents, maybe two. Even though acknowledging the bravery in sending potentially-life-changing-emails to strangers has taken the claws out of those rejections, I could've seriously cut down on those rejections if I had waited to start querying. 

And yet, I don’t regret submitting to agents when I did. Here's some brief background on me and my email trigger finger. 

I finished the first draft of my first novel in March of 2017, and after forcing myself to let it sit for a month, spent the whole next year revising. I worked in feedback from friends, professors, and other mentors. I applied for every revision-oriented scholarship or program I could find. I restructured, rewrote, and made it pretty, then did it all again. 

Since I knew I didn't want to self-publish but also had no idea what the alternative was for a college student from Massachusetts with no connections in the publishing industry, I also spent that time researching. This research told me that the next step on the ladder to my writing goals was to secure the representation of a literary agent, which sounded like a strange cocktail of an ancient lawyer/accountant/executor from a time when women couldn't sign contracts. 

And to get an agent’s attention, I had to write a query letter, also known as completing an obstacle course through hell, blindfolded. By February 2018, I had worked over it countless times. I told enough of the story to make someone want to read more, and I’d polished the opening pages. Everyone said so, so I thought it was ready. 

But I still had so much to learn. 

I learned how much I didn't know. 

I sent out my first few queries that winter, but I had no idea what I was doing. I called my book literary fiction, when now I know it's more upmarket/commercial women's. I didn't even know what women's fiction was (besides that it sounded sexist). The opening pages were part of a frame story I thought was oh-so-mysterious, when really it was incredibly transparent. 

As you might imagine, I got mostly form rejections. But not to be deterred, in March, I entered #PitMad, and got a full request! I ran around the house, shaking with excitement. I called my friends. I thought this agent would love me and my book, and my querying journey would be historically short. 

A month later, I found out she did not. But even in rejection, she went above and beyond, sending paragraphs of feedback, telling me at what point she checked out of the story, as well as what I could do to fix it. When I asked her later if she would reconsider the revised manuscript, she politely turned me down, but remained very gracious throughout the whole process. 

This experience not only set my expectations high for further communication with agents, but gave me an idea of what was appropriate and taught me that this road, just like the process of writing the book, involves much backtracking and retracing. 

I made a friend, and we made the book better. 

After that heartbreaking rejection, I paused the querying for the first time. I spent the summer of 2018 revising, editing, and crying over this book that I loved so much. On a whim, I put my email into a critique partner matching event, and won the lottery. 

The perspective from a virtual stranger was valuable enough when it came to seeing what I couldn’t in my own work. We once sent overly-formal emails and kept the conversation strictly to writing. But almost two years later, even across eighteen time zones, my match is now not only one of my first readers, but one of my most trusted friends. 

I had to decide how much I was willing to work. 

It would’ve been so easy to give up after that first round of rejections. I’m not a good writer, and no one wants my book because they just don’t get it.

But I kept on, and I revised that book more than I thought possible. I still don’t have a book deal at the time of this writing, but I am working on a new manuscript that I would’ve never written if the toil on the first book hadn’t shown me the support of so many fellow writers and friends.  

The querying advice out there overwhelmingly says to wait until your query and manuscript are perfect before sending them out, but the definition of perfection changes as we learn. Though I could've cut down on the rejections by working on the book more that spring, I also didn't know what I needed to do until I got that feedback and built up my rejection tolerance. 

In a way, querying too soon proved just right. 

Jess Costello has written for the One Love Foundation, Boston Hassle, and Well-Storied. She reads for a literary agent and is seeking representation for her first novel while working on her second. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @jcostellowrites and follow her blog at thecraftedpassion.wordpress.com.