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Technique #2: Start Your Next Project before Querying Agents
You've likely heard this advice before. It's the standard
suggestion for lessening the sting of rejection. The idea is that,
since you've just spent weeks, months--maybe years--laboring over
your manuscript, all your hopes for validation as a writer have
become centered on your most recent project. Once you start a new
project, the thinking goes, all your energy and hope transfers to
it. The manuscript about which you are querying is no longer your
center of attention and therefore you are less likely to feel
crushed by a rejection.
This technique works, but it can fall short if your time is
limited. A lot of effort goes into the query process: finding the
right agents/editors, understanding their needs, crafting a good
query letter, managing the comings and goings of correspondence. If
your writing time is limited, you can easily spend it all on the
querying process with no time left over to devote to your next
project. After all, it takes work to start something new (research,
plotting, character creation, etc.), and it can be weeks or months
before you're actively writing your next manuscript.
For this method to be effective, you may have to sit on your
recently completed project for a few weeks to give yourself time to
get engaged with your next project. This also gives you a chance to
get the query process going, so that by the time those SASEs begin
rolling in for your first manuscript, you're already putting the
finishing touches on chapter three of its sequel. (It also doesn't
hurt to set your newly finished work aside and take a fresh look
before sending it out to agents and editors.)
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Technique #3: Prepare Your Next Query Letter BEFORE You Get
Rejected
Also common advice: As soon as you receive a rejection letter,
immediately send out a new query.
I don't know about you, but after going through the pain and trauma
of receiving a rejection letter, the very last thing I want to do is
send out another query and make it happen again. You can avoid this
dilemma by writing your next query before you receive your SASE. If
a rejection letter equals Hopes Dashed, then there is nothing more
reviving than placing a new portion of Hope in the mail, right
away.
Tips for success: Make it as easy as possible to send out the next
query. Print everything out. Have stamps in place. Sign the
letter. Stuff the envelope. (Since you won’t know exactly when the
query will go out, don't include a date on the letter. Fear not, if
the editor or agent really wants to see your work, they won't reject
you simply because the date is missing from your query letter).
That way, when you do receive your SASE, it will take minimal
effort to launch the next query. There's nothing like seeing a
half-dozen query letters ready for action to combat rejection letter
blues.
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