Rejection number nine is a different type of rejection. I submitted my science fiction manuscript to three literary agents this spring. I found out that my dream literary agent was open to submission for the first time I had ever seen (there were a few years where I wasn’t actively looking, so I may have missed some windows).
I wasn’t really expecting much.
And this letter shows that I wasn’t wrong in expectations. This letter is from said dream literary agent, and it’s a form rejection. Such is life.
For those who may be unaware, this means that I cannot submit this project to her in the future. If I move on, don’t find an agent based on this manuscript, and get a new manuscript polished up for submission, I can try again with her for that new manuscript.
There is not a whole lot to read into this particular rejection. It’s a form rejection. There are two more agents that still have my materials, all submitted on 5/16/2026. This first rejection came in just a couple of short weeks later on 6/1/2026. That’s a speedy rejection, but not the speediest by far.
I submitted a previous version of this manuscript to agents in 2022, and the shortest response came in on the same day. That rejection read as a personalized rejection (though it is sometimes hard to tell), so that was encouraging despite the same-day response. I will absolutely take a rejection taking a little longer.
Or any response at all. Five agents didn’t send a response at all back in 2022, and that’s not abnormal. Any response, even a negative response, is better than no response in my book. So yay for a response!
Now back to the twiddling of thumbs while I await the others.
Note on letter images: I have here and will always black out the name of the market and the name of the person who sent the letter. These posts are not meant to speak about the publications at all. These are about my reactions to the letters and what I can learn from them.