Time to Celebrate Rejection

I’m writing to celebrate a rejection. Yes, it’s an odd thing to celebrate.

I just received the first official rejection letter for my book.

For those who don’t know, over the past two years I’ve written a book of psychological satire called “How to Make Yourself Angry in Any Situation.”

Ran the book through several rounds of edits with a local author, Amy Wallen (https://www.amywallen.com/), who’s published in multiple genres, including humor. She’s been a wonderful editor and even better coach.

The biggest confidence booster, though, is that she has literally reached out to agents to tell them that this book is worth a look.

As a first-timer in this business, and someone who is prone to recalcitrant self-doubt, having a published author put her name behind this project gives me something concrete to grab during all those days (and nights) the doubt monster attacks.

Anyway, I’ve recently sent out my first query letters (a sort of narrative resume for me and the book), including one to my buddy Amy’s former agent. The agent got back to me today with an encouraging but clear “no”.

I’m celebrating this “no” because it’s often so easy for me to believe my world will come to an end if I give something my best effort and it doesn’t work.

A reminder of what my friend and mentor Michael Yapko (https://yapko.com/) says: “You’ll do things, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll work. And while there’s no guarantee, you can create possibilities. And the question is, ‘How many possibilities can you create?'”

Now that this rejection is out of the way, it’ll make the next five hundred rejection letters just fly by.

Yapko also used to say, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” I can’t control a lot of the future, but I hope to create as many possibilities for this book to succeed as time permits.

And it’s about time to send out another query letter. Let’s hope the next rejection letter is even more brutal.