Rejection in My Mailbox, or Was It

I walked in the house the other day and found the mail sorted on the kitchen counter. Husband had pulled it out of the mailbox and left a stack for me and a stack for No. 2 accordingly. I don't get a lot of mail addressed solely to me except for catalogs—and boy, do I ever get the catalogs—so I was excited. I recognized the SASE right away, the one I had sent to a literary agent just four weeks before. They tell you to include a SASE so they can more easily reply to your submission. This reply was a rejection, but the blow was softened because the other item in my stack was my membership card for MENSA. So, take that, you loser agent who doesn't know real marketable talent even when it lands on your desk in the form of three chapters and a query letter. Who wins today? I do.

If you were hanging around here last year, you may remember my writing a novel I called Maryann. I have since retitled it Mrs. Branch and have started looking for an agent. I have sent inquiries to seven or eight agents, and so far I have seven or eight rejections, although several of them haven't actually responded despite the SASE. I take their silence as a "no."

I am not discouraged at this stage in my hunt for representation. I have been reading up on famous authors and their rejections and have found I am in good company. Even the most successful authors weren't always valued by publishers, and in the beginning, they had to hunt with submission after hopeful submission just like I do.

J. K. Rowling received at least 12 rejections for her first Harry Potter book. Stephen King collected at least 25 before Carrie found a publisher. When The Diary of Anne Frank was being sent around, one publisher replied, "The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the 'curiosity' level." The book has since sold more than 25 million copies. One of Dr. Seuss's rejection letters read, "too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling." Humph.

Margaret Mitchell braved 38 rejections to have Gone With the Wind published. Richard Hooker had to ship out 18 submissions for M*A*S*H before he finally found a publisher. Kurt Vonnegut, D. H. Lawrence, Ray Bradbury, Judy Blume, e.e. cummings, Rudyard Kipling, Beatrix Potter, Agatha Christie, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Heller—they all received vast numbers of rejections before seeing their books in print.

I think if they can stick with it, then so can I. When you put seven or eight rejections in perspective, that really isn't very many, and if I intend to join the ranks of the likes of Jack Kerouac, George Orwell, and H. G. Wells, then I have a lot more submissions to mail out. And while I am waiting for just the right agent to say "yes," I've got my MENSA card to remind me that I'm not an idiot. As if.

As if I need a card to tell me that.