A ‘Good’ Rejection

I received a rejection this past week, truly out of the blue.  The agent in question has noted on his site that queries they are interested in will be responded to within four weeks.  Otherwise they are ‘passing.’  Since I sent this query in early August, I wrote it off long ago.

Well, he still passed, but wrote to tell me personally.  When I posted to my Facebook profile that this occurrence excited me, several non-writers became confused. 

He wrote me a personal note, not a form letter. In the past my queries have received form letters.  Mostly.  I had one very short personal note saying the agent had represented this type of work in the past, but had moved away from it.  And another kind agent inserted a little note into her form letter:  “A little dialect goes a long way.  Use it once and drop it.”  See, that stood out so much I remember it nearly two years later.

But this agent also mentioned I had done something well:  ” … your pages evidence the micro-tension that I feel is so important to any novel’s success.”

Wow!  And I’d done it in the five page submission.  (Of course I had to go see where that ended to read what I’d included.)  Unfortunately, this followed him saying Passages is the type of science fiction he’s found exceedingly hard to place.

Oh, well.  I’ve moved up a level in the quality of my rejection letters. Now to write something easy to sell.