Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Dreams, Rejections, and a Plan

First off, the bad news: Shadow Mountain the smaller publisher looking at a partial of Cobbogoth decided to pass on it.  I was discouraged for a few hours, but have an excellent, sympathetic husband who is always there to help pull me out of a rut.  Bless him.  It was kind of funny, though, my friend Kristen Knight--also a writer (http://www.fancydeep.com/), check her out.  Her book is fantastic, and she's agent hunting right now.  So, she had this dream that Shadow Mountain actually wanted my book and I became "wildly successful", and I quote, "like unto J.K. Rowling". (Her words, but let's face it, every author's dream, right? I mean, come on!)

Anyway, she texted me about her dream and I said to myself, "hmmmm..." because I'd kind of given up on hearing anything back from them.  Well, then I remembered that I too had had a dream that I heard back from them, and for the life of me I couldn't remember if they'd wanted it or not.  So, we had this whole conversation of how cool her dream scenario would be.  But then later that afternoon, I go out to my mail box and theres a letter from them.  I know, weird.  With the stereotypical "trembling fingers", I rip the envelope to shreds, only to find this very nice rejection letter--they aren't always that nice--and I'm thinking "Thanks for not crushing my dream to smithereens, but this isn't right.  This is not how it happened in Kristen's dream." :) 

Anyway, it was all kind of creepy how we both had dreams, yada yada, and then the letter comes the next day.  Weird. 

So, now that I've pulled myself back together, the new plan is to finish the final edits--I've kind of been taking a break--and get it in the hands of an editor. Then, by the end of August, I'm going to really hit the querying process hard until I get a "yes"...because, my friends, I am not stopping until I get one.  Too much blood, sweat, and tears have gone into this one. ;)  Besides, Elana Johnson--from querytracker.net, said you can't really give up unless you've gotten at least 100 rejections--she queried 180 agents before she finally got representation.  I take a lot of comfort in that.   Moral of the story: it only takes one "yes"--well, technically two, because the publisher has to say it as well, but you get my point. 

Anyway!  That's the latest and greatest in Hannah L. Clark's writing adventures.  Stay tuned for next time when Hannah expertly employs capital letters and a plethora of exclamation points to illustrate her excitement at getting the ever hoped for "Yes"! from her dream agent.

Just putting it out there. ;)

1 comment:

  1. I think maybe I just got the name of the publisher wrong? Not always great at names. I think it was Simon & Schuster instead. : )

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