Random Rejection: Sandra Dijkstra Agency, 1994

So one of the things I used to spend a lot of time on was trying to get a literary agent.  (I’ve had a grand total of three over the years, and none of them ever sold a single thing.  But that’s a different post …)

Here’s an exchange that’s pretty typical of how my interaction with a literary agent would go.  First I would send a query (possibly including sample chapters), and then I would get back something like this:

Hey, wow, cool, they want to see more!  So I would package up whatever they asked for (in this case, 50 pages) and ship it out and then wait … and wait … and wait … and then finally I would get back something like this:

Curses!  Foiled again!  I had all the books that they would recommend for finding literary agents … a new copy of Writer’s Market every year … a new copy of literary agent listings every year … and what did I end up with?  A collection of outdated reference books.  *SIGH*  Now we have the Internets, of course, so I can find literary agents quickly and easily online without sacrificing any shelf space, which makes the whole process of getting rejected go a lot faster.  (Or it would, if I were still looking for an agent.  Which I’m not.)

You may be curious as to what book was under consideration here.  To be honest I can’t remember.  From the time frame (early 1994) it was most likely either Night Watchman or Long Before Dawn.

Interesting side note:  I now live only about twenty-five miles from where this agency is located.  If I were a client, I could drop by for lunch from time to time.  But, oh well.  They’ll have to buy their own pizza, I guess.