The other day I opened up my Gmail account and began skimming to see what I had missed. I had been on the road all day for work and hadn’t even checked my personal email since 6 a.m., probably a record. As I began sorting through the junk, the subject line of one email jumped out at me, RE: QUERY Does Love Always Win?. I immediately thought, Here we go again, another rejection, and opened the email with trepidation. As I began reading, my jaw dropped; this wasn’t a rejection email at all. They wanted to read my manuscript and gave me the exact reasons justifying their decision. The email was not only complimentary to my pitch, but even my blog posts, MY BLOG POSTS! They spent the time to get to know me and my writing and were still interested in reading my whole manuscript! Was this real life?
I was in basement about to my practice French horn when I happened upon this email. I put my horn on the ground and ran upstairs to find my husband, jumping up and down with joy. I couldn’t believe it. Someone liked my writing? I also hadn’t realized how numb I was becoming from all of the rejections until I got this email; I never had felt so validated. There is always a little voice in my brain that creeps in that says, You’re not a real writer. You should just give up now and let the professionals take over. This email was what I didn’t know I needed.
Now I feel more invigorated than ever. I sent off my manuscript to them that night and also posted about it on Twitter. Somehow my tweet took off; it’s up to over 900 likes and I gained over 200 followers! The support and encouragement has been astounding. I’m trying my best not to keep hitting refresh on my email. It’s normal for the reviewing process to take two to three months, so I need to ground my expectations accordingly.
While I’m waiting, I’m going to send off a few more queries and participate in another Twitter pitch in September. It’s really exciting to see my hard work pay off. I restructured my query letter last month and this was one of the first queries I tried with updated materials. I’m not sure if this particular avenue will work out, but regardless, I will be forever thankful for the individual that sent me such a kind, personalized email about my writing.
Diane Billas 