I was recently reading an article that showed rejection letters submitted to artists of various kinds (writing, painting, singing, etc) who have since gone on to be very famous and successful. The article talks a lot about how foolish these people were who sent these rejections, and I'm sure, looking back, they may be kicking themselves for not getting to be a part of that success.
As anyone completes their first (or seventh) novel and sends it out in hopes of getting published, there are going to be rejection letters. I have a friend who saw firsthand how seemingly random poems were chosen to be published in a magazine, and she, as a poet, found it disheartening.
I, however, choose to see it as encouraging.
The article from above shows how these people were rejected but didn't give up. They kept on developing their gifts and continued searching for the person who would see their vision of their art, and eventually they found it.
There will always be rejection letters. I have been in many book clubs, and I can read a book and adore it while someone else could barely get through it. Or it can be someone's favorite book, and I truly didn't care for it. The same way that there are drastic tastes in readers, there are drastic tastes in agents and publishers.
I recently found a wonderful author. She has written three different series of mystery novels. I completely adore one of them, and don't care for the second. The mystery in the second was perfectly good, but I didn't care for the dialogue between characters or perhaps didn't care for the characters themselves. I have, only this morning, checked out the first book in her third series, and we'll see how I like that one. But that is drastic differences myself within mystery novels by the same person!
And yes, I assume agents and publishers look beyond their own personal enjoyment and can see the books from a business point of view. Perhaps they have some issues with some of the characters, but can see past that to how well received they can see the general public will find it. I don't know: I'm neither an agent nor a publisher.
But I think the main thing to take away from it is that you don't give up. Perhaps this book of yours gets rejected fifty times over. That doesn't mean that you turn your back on your dream of being a published author.
But it also doesn't mean that you don't look hard at your story. It might be a great idea, but maybe you're writing needs to continue to grow and improve before anyone will be intrigued enough to read it all the way through.
I completed the first version of my novel a little over a year ago. I sent off whatever sections agents asked for, and started to wait. And before a week was up, I suddenly realized how to make my book unbelievably better. It meant throwing out over half the story and starting over, but it was improve the book dramatically.
Which means, that that first version was in need of improvement. It had flaws that I didn't notice until I saw how to fix them.
And I have gotten so many rejection letters from those agents I did query before realizing how to improve. They didn't sting though, since I had already realized these flaws that needed to change.
However, I'm sure that when I do sent it out to be queried whenever this new version is done, I will get rejection letters. And I expect they will hurt a lot more than the ones I've already received, since I will (hopefully) have it polished to the brightest sheen my book can be at.
But you don't need fifty acceptance letters. You just need one. And maybe this novel won't be the one to do it, but you just keep writing until you write the story that finds that perfect person who sees the beauty in it.
Even the most successful novelists get rejected. They just never gave up.
