Rejection! and The Right Match

I got my first "no" from the query I sent out last week. That was fast! I don't feel too bad because the whole thing was rather impersonal.

It was even kind of amusing because I'm doing this on Gmail, so there was a uniquely tantalizing preview: "Thank you so much for sending the X Literary Agency your query. We'd like to." We'd like to WHAT? To quest the full manuscript? To offer me a package deal for three books and accompanying movies and miniseries? To kiss my feet with gratitude because they'd thought literature was dead and my submission revealed that that's not the case?

But I knew intuitively that couldn't quite be it, because it began "Dear Author." If they were enthused about a project, I assume they would take the trouble to address it to an actual name. 

They only wanted to apologize for the impersonal nature of the rejection. Which is fine. 

There was a sentence in the form letter, which is meant to be encouraging, but that seemed simplistic to me: "After all, it only takes one 'yes' to find the right match."

I've done enough dating, finding writing groups, accepting manuscripts for publication and getting short stories published to know that it frequently takes a lot of yeses to find the right match as opposed to just any match. The key is getting past a sea of nos and to a yes everyone can live with, which may not be the first one that comes along. 

My life over the past three years has trained me to be as patient as a saint.  Patience wears thin, but something will always come along to give it a second (third, fourth, etc) wind. Patience and persistence are behind all the "overnight" success stories.

Ever onward!