I see

I am starting to see the wisdom in multiple submissions to agents--I received an email rejection from Ellen Levine (again praising the writing--I do like these personal letters, even if they pass on the query). I still have three agents out there with queries (Suzanne Gluck, Diana Finch, and Molly Friedrich). Getting my first "rejection" from an agent a few months ago (not a rejection actually, but a request to see the work again when it's revised) really saddened me for a little while (I allow myself no more than an hour of self-pity before I get back to work--this looking-for-an-agent is, after all, a business. I also dated a writer whose self-pity was so tedious that it made me pray for someone to publish him, just to shut him up. I made a conscious decision long ago to not be like him--the whining and three-a.m.-angst is just too prima donna for my tastes). Anyway, a couple of months and a couple of rejections later, agent rejection is not a big deal, except that it makes me want to go into my office and get more queries out. Maybe if I go through twenty rejections, I'll feel more discouraged, but there are a lot of agents out there, and I'm not giving up. I'm used to rejection letters, to some degree (though I don't keep them--I satisfy pyro urges by burning them in my woodstove)--I've been publishing poetry and other work for 23 years--but was always opposed to making multiple submissions of anything. Still, I've started to do that, very judiciously, and usually not with poetry.

By the way, if you click on the link I added to this entry, you can see some rejection letters of folks who didn't exactly vanish into writerly obscurity. I often read stuff like this, too, when I've had a spate of rejections--though of course I am not on a part with Ayn Rand, or even Dr. Seuss--still, it's at least comforting to know that most writers have had to spend time in the trenches.