I know, I've met mine. We had lunch. She gave me half her burger because it was huge.
Every now and then, the internet and literary world get together and throw up some
truly memorable episodes of
crazy. The latest is that of the
Rejection Queen, a truly determined soon-to-be-published writer, who keeps a blog tracking her rejections and her responses to them. Now, if you have a lot of time on your hands, like I did yesterday, you might want to go back through the archives and see her turn from pretty normal wannabe writer plugging along on the query-go-round (we've all been there, right? The hope, the rejection, the pain, the renewed hope, etc...) to vective-spitting crazy lady.
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dwg reviews it all quite neatly.
Look, rejection sucks. Really, we all know that. Whether it's romantic, professional, personal, whatever. It sucks. It hurts. It batters our precious egos and we cry and everyone pats us on the shoulder and assures us that perseverence is the key and you're better off without him. And it's fine to stomp your feet and wail that nobody understands your deathless prose and everyone can drop dead because YOU'LL SHOW THEM ALL!!! Really, that's fine.
As long as you do it in private.
Because the Internet sees all. Deleting your ranty, screamy post about how all literary agents are moronic morons who wouldn't know good writing if it slapped them in the face will do you no good. Your rant can be revisited time and time again through the magic of Google caching. And anyway, even if you do delete it, it's too late! People saw and spread the word. They've flocked to your blog, either to mock you or offer you genuinely sound advice on how your blog was a bad idea.
If you want any success as a writer, you've got to let go of the idea that nobody but you knows how to make it. Let go of the idea that there's some big conspiracy in place that keeps unpublished writers from breaking out. Stop thinking of literary agents as people who exist soley to crush your dreams. Because that's just stupid. As
dwg says, if your chosen job is to find good writers with publishable books, you're going to be a pretty discerning reader. So if someone rejects your novel, it most likely isn't because they hate you and want to see you fail out of jellus mean-meaniness.
If you've got to vent, do it offline. I had my fair share of hissy fits when I was submitting AFTERLIFE around, but I kept them f-locked, or left them offline altogether. Because man, the world is connected! People can Google each other and find all kinds of exciting things out. And I'm pretty sure, if you're a literary agent with a prospective client, you're going to Google them. And when you see their vitriolic blog about how every literary agent is either a bitch or a pathetic hag, you're going to think twice about taking that writer on.
Probably in a few weeks, nobody will remember this, and Rejection Queen can go on submitting and being rejected. The Lanaia Lee thing died down (although I still check her website occasionally because
her author bio is simply stunning). But in the mean time, here's my stance:
There's no conspiracy - agents want to find good writers. It's a mutually supportive system.
Art is subjective - people have different tastes. Not everyone is going to think your super-speshul novel is literary gold, and you have to learn to live with it.
You're not entitled to anything - writing is hard work and loads of people are doing it, just the same as you. If you want to get anywhere, drop the precious princess act.
Literary agents are people too - they
share their burgers are entitled to like or dislike your writing and it doesn't make them evil, wicked mean-meanies.
"Fuck*" has a "c" in it - "fuked" is not a word.
*Sorry, Dad.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
