Sorry, I know this is a bit cringey and self-indulgent but I’ve just finalised a 70,000 word upmarket fiction novel that I’ve been working on for a while. I had to step away from it for a few months to be able to pick it up with fresh eyes. So now it’s written, edited, finalised, and winging its way to some agents.
Because I’ve been trying to think as her for weeks now, I started thinking about how my protagonist would feel, in my shoes, and here’s what I think she’d post to Mumsnet.
(This isn’t meant to be literary perfection, it’s just me joking around, and at the mercy of autocorrect)
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Posting anonymously because this feels like the kind of thing that would immediately sound more confident if I put my name on it, and I don’t feel particularly confident.
I’ve finished my novel. Final draft is 70,000 words. It’s edited, it’s coherent, it holds together. I’ve done everything you’re supposed to do before sending something out into the world and asking strangers to decide whether it has value. This week, I submitted it to six agents.
Since then, I’ve been rehearsing rejection.
Not in a dramatic way, but quietly, and practically. The way I’ve always done it.
I’ve already imagined the emails. I’m sure they’ll be polite, encouraging in a vague, almost parental way. “Not quite right for my list.” “Didn’t fall in love.” “Wish you the best of luck elsewhere.” I’ve drafted the gracious replies in my head. I’ve imagined myself being impressively adult about it: calm and reasonable. Slightly relieved, even, because once something is rejected, at least it’s decided.
What’s strange is that rejection itself doesn’t feel unfamiliar. It feels like a pattern I recognise well enough to plan around.
For most of my life, I’ve been the person who understands first. The one who reads the room. The one who adjusts expectations quietly so no one has to say the uncomfortable thing out loud. I’m good at absorbing disappointment and converting it into something manageable. Rejection, when it comes, rarely arrives as a shock. It arrives as confirmation.
The novel is about a woman who believes that if she can just be clear enough, patient enough, reasonable enough, things will eventually resolve in her favour. She keeps mistaking endurance for intimacy, telling herself that staying long enough will eventually turn obligation into desire. Being almost chosen becomes a consolation prize she learns to accept.
Writing the book forced me to confront how familiar that logic is.
Sending it out to agents feels like offering something I care about to the same mechanism. Not because agents are cruel, I’m sure they’re not, but because the system itself requires indifference. They don’t owe me anything, they don’t owe the book anything. I know this, I accept it. And still… there’s a small, traitorous part of me that wants to believe that if the work is good enough, rejection will somehow be unnecessary.
The hardest part has been realising that rejection here won’t mean the book is bad. It will mean it didn’t land. And that distinction, which sounds so reasonable in theory, is much harder to live with in practice. It offers no clear corrective action. There’s nothing to fix, no magic lever to pull. Just the knowledge that something true, carefully made, and honestly offered can still be passed over without explanation. Like I was.
I’ve caught myself bracing for silence more than for “no”. Silence feels like the purest form of rejection. It has no shape, no edge, nothing to push against. Just the slow understanding that whatever you hoped for isn’t happening.
I’m trying to stay with that discomfort rather than rushing to reframe it. Trying not to immediately turn it into a lesson, or a plan, or a way of being better next time. If the book is rejected, I want to let that hurt be what it is before I decide what it means.
I think this means I’m learning.
I don’t know yet how I’ll feel when the responses start coming in. I suspect I’ll manage them competently. I usually do. The bigger question is whether I’ll let myself feel disappointed in a way that doesn’t immediately make it my fault.
If you’ve been here, if you’ve sent something out that mattered and watched it come back untouched, I’d be grateful to hear how you stayed with yourself through it.
Thanks for reading. Writing this is easier than waiting. And I’ve done a lot of waiting.
S xx