Today, I got my first rejection.

AND I AM OKAY.

In fact, I’m really happy. It was a really nice rejection letter that didn’t put me down as a writer. Here was the response I got:

“Dear Beth,

Thank you for sending in your work, which we have now had a chance to consider.

While we enjoyed reading your material, we felt eventually that it was not quite the right fit for us. Due to the number of submissions which we receive, we are unable to offer feedback regarding our decision.

We hope that you are not discouraged by our response and wish you every success with finding representation for your work. Thank you for thinking of PEW Literary.

With very best wishes,

Charlotte”

Now, I don’t know if this was an automated response (that would be quite unprofessional if it was) but having interned in a publishing house, I know that it’s possible there are dozens of different kinds of automated responses which someone hand picks. For example, there might be ones that say that your writing was amateur or your query letter didn’t comply with the rules. So to get one that is simply stating that my work isn’t right for them – THAT’S A GOOD THING.

I feel butterflies because somebody read my work – somebody in the publishing industry – and they ‘enjoyed’ it. I’m not getting over my head about it – it didn’t say they loved it or anything. But they enjoyed it and that’s good to hear.

I knew sending it to PEW Literary probably wasn’t going to be a good fit. And even if they offered me representation, I might have rejected it because their style of books is very different from mine.

The reason I sent it to them was because a) I respect them as an agency and b) I had a lot of advice to submit to people you wouldn’t LOVE to represent you first, in case you get feedback on your writing or querying. Because if you get feedback that you can easily improve, you want to do that before sending them to the amazing agencies that you really want. So, I submitted to 3 or 4 people that yes, I would be honoured to be represented by but no, I wouldn’t be devastated if they rejected me.

So yay – first rejection and I didn’t die! So that’s great. One step closer to finding the right agent for me…