It’s very easy to hate literary agents. They call you “Dear Author,” reply with bland, vague, copy-pasted letters (on those rare occasions they bother to reply to you at all), and nine times out of ten, toss your query letter aside after maybe 30 seconds of contemplation after you spent a week writing it.
To date, I’ve received somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 rejections from agents on one book, accumulated over the past 2 and a half years. So I have a very good reason to despise agents and their ilk, but oddly enough, I don’t.
That’s not to say there haven’t been instances where I haven’t been frustrated, or wanted to pelt the offending agent with lots of hard, sharp objects, but publishing is a business, and it’s nothing personal. They’re doing their job, and any reason for them rejecting my work is my fault, not theirs.
I think that’s something a lot of authors forget. It’s very easy to blame the market, or a particular agent, instead of directing that critical finger at yourself. I know I can be a bit of a bastard in my writing. I take a good bit of sadistic glee in cutting into a bad piece of published literature. I earned more than my fair share of hatred in my various college writing classes when I would tell my peers that what they had written was atrocious and they should cut off their writing hand in shame. But as critical as I am of others, I’m twice as bad on myself.
So I don’t hate agents for rejecting my work, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t disheartening, or that I did throw the occasional tantrum. It’s not fun having somebody snub something you’ve put months and/or years of work into. It’s demoralizing, and more often than not, makes me want to give up on this writing business altogether and take up a less emotionally painful hobby, like knitting or punching myself in the balls.
But like a true masochist I keep coming back for more, and am oddly grateful for the rejections I receive. That project I’ve gotten 50-60 rejections on, I finally gave up on it. I may do a page one rewrite somewhere down the road (because even though there are pacing and plot issues aplenty, it’s still rich with character development and original ideas), I know that now it’s time to move on.
When I was 19 and just starting college, I wanted desperately to be published. To be one of those sensational youthful authors. I look back on that now and want to write a personal Thank You card to any agent that was smart enough to turn me down. My writing back then was embarrassing. Still a far sight better than what seniors in my capstone course writing class were shitting out, but embarrassing none-the-less.
I look at things Swordbird, by Nancy Yi-Fan, who was published at 14, and can’t help but feel sorry for the girl. The book is absurd. It’s laughably bad, shallow, and frankly, stupid.
Wait.
Stop.
I know the response you’re already cooking up in your head. I’m using my psychic powers to infiltrate your brain. “But it’s really good for a 14-year-old,” or something along those lines. Right? I agree. Swordbird is very good for a 14-year-old writer. But it isn’t good for a writer, period. When somebody is published, I’m going to hold them up to other authors and my own reading experience. I do not give handicaps or special bonuses for age. Swordbird is not a good book and its author is not a good writer. No addendums of “She’s only 14,” none of that.
Nancy Yi-Fan needed an agent or a publisher to send her a rejection letter. She needed to grow as an author, and grow-up in the general sense, before she could be considered a good writer. Instead she, like other wunderkind authors, is riding by on the fact that they are young. That’s it. I have no doubt that if an adult had submitted Swordbird in the same fashion Nancy Yi-Fan had, they would have been lucky to get a form rejection.
It would have been a painful experience, one I became familiar with at a much younger age, but it would have been a benefit to her in the long run.
So don’t hate agents, at least, not most of them. Most of them are good folks doing their job, and conducting business as they see fit. Rewrite your manuscript or start on a new one. It can only be better than what you’ve got now.
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