Back to the Drawing Board…
Well, I’ve received a rejection from the last agent who had my full. She gave me some good feedback-some I’ll be taking and some I won’t. I sat on the feedback for a few days. I had to read over the email again with a brain that wasn’t clogged with disappointment and my ears weren’t ringing with sadness, (dramatic, aren’t I?).
I don’t want to be the type of writer who can’t take feedback because lord knows that would be the death of my career, but I also don’t want to be the type of writer who takes everything that someone says to me and runs with it.
Unless I’m truly delusional, I think I have a healthy balance. One of the things this agent said was that I could build the world a bit more. She felt like it was whole in my head but lacked a bit on the page. She was right. I didn’t have to think twice to answer the questions she posed to make my world more substantial. So obviously I had these world building facts fleshed out, but hadn’t put them to work in my story. I sprinkled them into my ms, and hopefully solved that issue.
This next thing she said was what I decided not to take. My story is told in the pov of more than one character. It’s not head-hopping, but as I’m sure you have all read a story that will give you say, the killer’s pov and then the cop, and then the protagonist, this is sort of what I do except I don’t have a killer or a cop-lol. The agent felt that I did myself a disservice by doing this and maybe I should consider telling the story wholly from one of either the female or male lead character. The majority of the book is told from the male lead’s pov, and I feel like I would lose something crucial to my story if I did this.
I realized, (when I was through being bummed) that this agent was probably not the one for me. I know it’s what we all tell ourselves when we are rejected, but if she doesn’t really care for something that is actually my style of writing, and something I’ll most likely do in all or most of the books I write, then she would probably have a problem with every one of my manuscripts. Granted, like she said, I might be doing myself a disservice and I guess only time will tell, but I have to be true to what I believe is right for my story, my style and my writing career.
And now I have compiled a new list of agents, revamped my query and when I get back from vacation, I’ll get back out there into the big bad world of querying!