Hooray!

There it is, my first one. Opened almost fresh this morning local time. I think I heard it beeping its way to my phone during the night but only in the early hours I booted up my computer and patiently sipped my coffee, checking the latest headlines before opening the thing. Mind you, I even put an internet radio on to play some Xmas feelings as I use to do every year about this time; they played “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” But there it was, in accord with the music:
An e-mail of rejection.

From a literary agent, that is. It would be very pretentious to say the experience was pure rejoicing; it was not that cleansing or blessed moment. Some author advised “Embrace the failure!” but I’ve been happy enough just to brace for it. Despite all the mental training a tiny disappointment lurks under that creative and sensitive skin: “Oh no! My brilliant and top novel! Why?” But the moment was very meaningful and of course a bit educating in its cruel way.
The agent faced my query from a queue of myriad of others, applied the criteria for good writing, even better pitch and first pages and comparing it to current market flows; perhaps finding none of these filling the gaps. And perhaps letting out a little sigh upon the query’s lack of personality and target readers for the works.
But they still sent out a friendly reply, wishing happy hunting. Which is something not every literary agent does but gives only a hint in their web pages about the time after which the lack of replies means rejection.

I’m not going to repeat the fact which dwells in every course and every advice to those people trying to get their works through, about this-and-that nowadays-a-renowned-author gone through a hundred of rejections at first. If you are doing this, you know it.
Well, I have other queries in, waiting for their doom and I should prepare the next volley to be sent over. Maybe next year, the agents may be wading through their backlogs for the rest of the year, some wise warned. Not a game for hasty people, this one.
Typing the characters into some supposedly clever order to form tens of of thousands of words is still fun. The day it turns into a heavy and heartless work, I quit. Which, by the way, you can’t do if you get a contract. You started it yourself, better have that fun to the end 🙂

Meanwhile in the sideshow, Ace the Cat seems to have recovered but is still a bit timid about jumping. We didn’t take him to another round at the vet, as they initially found nothing and he’s not worse. At least he eats and plays and again sneaks into the study in order to overturn the waste basket, for reasons unknown. But hey, he’s a cat.

Enough babble, today is the annual day of national peeping, the fiscal year of the people is revealed to everyone and headlines are filled with gossips of huge or lousy incomes. I filtered out the most common headlines of the infamy from my news portal.
Need to get out.
Rainy day, it is.