When I was in the tense time of life in which I was sending out queries of my novel, I prayed a tiny prayer before I hit submit on each one. I prayed that this query would land on the right agent for my book, and that if it landed on the wrong agent, I prayed that I would be able to accept that they weren’t the right agent when they made themselves known through rejecting me. Okay, maybe I didn’t say that exact prayer, but each time I thought, “I believe in the forces that will help me find the right agent and help me eliminate the ones who are not my agent.”
This was my mental Jedi mind trick to help me accept the rejection. It helped me depersonalize the rejections I knew rationally I was going to receive. I accepted that there would be wrong agents for my book, or agents I thought could be right who were actually wrong. But I also accepted that there was at least one agent who was the right agent…and that was the fight I was in, the fight to eliminate the wrong ones.
I do not see rejections as failures, but actually see them as clarity of the wrong path. I am grateful I found my path and to those who rejected my novel along the way, I say, “Thank you!”
