In-box, part 3

This is the last in a three part series.

Yesterday we talked about all of the new in-boxes technology has blessed us with. Today let's take a look at a non-random sample of what has shown up in my various in-boxes in the last couple of days.

Our in-boxes can fill us with confidence. Or doubt. Or maybe both at the same time.

Yesterday I received my first rejection letter from a literary agent, a signal event for me. Here's what it said:

Dear Hank,

I regret to say that I don’t feel that I’m the most appropriate agent for your work.

However, opinions vary considerably in this business, and I wish you the best of luck in your search for representation.

Best wishes,

Agent X

Ouch. That's what we call a form letter in the writing biz. Agent X found my heartfelt query so uninspiring that he bounced back within an hour or so with his standard two-line rejection--the literary equivalent of "go away kid and don't come back."

Usually, if the agent thinks a project or author holds some promise he/she will make a comment or two about why he/she is saying no before telling you to get lost.

I've contacted two other agents within the last few days, and Agent X is the only one to respond so far. My plan is to tweak my query letter based on agent feedback and circulate my latest version to only a few at any one time. Given the usefulness of the first feedback I received, I may have to rethink my strategy.

So I'm off to a disheartening start to marketing the fruit of my months of labor.

But it was Aristotle who said "one swallow does not make a summer." There are plenty of other agents and publishers out there who haven't had a chance to reject me yet.

I feel my skin getting thicker already.

Then there's this comment posted here the other day by an anonymous Discerning Reader:

I started a new job yesterday. Before that, I was unemployed for 9 months. I was not writing or anything else. I was unemployed. I felt useless, and I was. I was not creating anything but misery. I do not have a creative bone in my body. Although I believe that everyone has a good book within them, I have not yet found mine. Hank, I admire you so much for what you are doing. I hope I can get to that point some day. For now, I need to be a follower, and do as I am told. Wish me luck at my new job...I think I will need it. All the best to you...I KNOW you will SUCCEED!

Here was my response. Anon: Whoever you are, you have inspired me on a morning when inspiration is exactly what I needed. Thank you!

The way you describe your feelings during your time of unemployment doesn't surprise me. I have a number of friends who are now enduring exactly what you have gone through for the last nine months, and I know how being unemployed has impacted them in every imaginable way, especially in the way they see themselves.

Congratulations on the new job and the new start. Once you've gained some distance from the bad times, I'll bet you will better appreciate your own worth--not as an employee, but as a person who loves and is loved by others. I suspect you will also realize that our greatest contributions to this world don't come in work we do to earn a paycheck

Our self-identities may be wrapped up in our work, but who we really are is revealed in the hours when we're not pulling a shift to earn a salary.

The other day I got a phone call from a friend with an offer to do some temp work. I turned him down, but I was tempted for a moment at the idea of doing some "normal" work for a fixed amount of money.

After I've received several dozen more cut-and-paste rejections like the one from Agent X, I'll have to start considering other options for bringing cash into the house.

But the Best Year Ever isn't over yet. There's still a little more than a third of it left and a new project is in the works.

For now I'm going to cling to the words of Anonymous, my wife and friends who have told me in their own ways "I KNOW you will SUCCEED!"

Hope? Despair? Who knows what the in-box will bring today.