Rejection-jection, what's your infection?

Imagine yourself snugged up against the gymnasium wall. Generation-appropriate music is playing, couples are dancing, laughing, talking and there you stand with Messy Melvin and Sniveling Sue playing the "I didn't want to come to this dance, anyway" tape in your head.

Rejection is one of the worst feelings we can endure as human beings. We suffer it as children when we are chosen last. We deny it in high school when the person we are smitten with spends the entire night dancing with the jock/cheerleader. And in my case, I dance in the middle of the gymnasium floor as if I could care less whether anyone was dancing with me. However you deal with it, rejection sucks the backside of a donkey.

That's pretty much how I feel right now. My manuscript sits and gathers dust while the rejections trickle in. The questions go through my mind: Was my query good enough? Is the manuscript strong enough? It's a simple matter. Your mind begins to focus on any perceived flaws that you may think the manuscript has or the query. You begin the process of re-writing the query or maybe re-working characters, but you continue to cling to the hope that just one agent will either request a full manuscript or call you up and offer you a contract. I think the worst thing that you begin to question is whether you should have started writing int he first place. I haven't traveled to that place yet, but I think I've been looking at the map a little bit.

It's scary. On the one hand, you know that this is what you love. You know, for whatever reason, God put a finger on your brain and said, "Writer". On the other hand, the agent puts a finger on the send button of the e-mail program and says, "Sorry, not interested." Ultimately, it'll come down to a question of who you're going to believe. Right now, I'm going to believe that this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm going to suffer the rejections and keep writing. I'm going to strengthen my characters and my queries and I will continue to dance the night away in the middle of the gymnasium floor as if I don't care. Someone will ask me to dance at some point, right?

That's all for now.