If you’ve ever queried a literary agent, you know what I’m talking about. Rejection is a part of every writer’s life. Some sting more than others. The sting subsides, though. Usually, after you fall asleep and wake up the next day. You keep a wary eye on your inbox and can guess the result (rejection) accompanied by a feeling of doom when you see a QueryTracker reply from someone you queried. On QT, if you’re familiar with it, you know that a red frowny face appears on your query if an agent rejected it. You wonder whether there’s a green smiling face out there.

Buck up. It’s life. You gotta have a thick skin. Getting rejected by an agent is a lot worse than getting picked apart in Publishers Weekly. I was thrilled to see my work had been reviewed! (Then I read the review.)

And today wasn’t necessarily a bad day for me. Yes, I got a rejection, but it rolled off me. The sting comes when you begin questioning yourself, your ability. If you’ve done everything you can to perfect your manuscript, paying a professional editor to give you the god’s honest truth and then heeding advice to fix it, revising the manuscript (and having tons of fun doing it because what the editor said was spot on and you discover ways to fix things), then keep going. And always remember you are not alone.