Rejected.

So I received my official rejection letter from a children's agent earlier this week. It wasn't particularly surprising, since I hadn't heard from him in months, but it still stung - I can't lie about that. In retrospect the way in which I received the letter was mildly comical. My boyfriend handed it to me - along with three bills and my latest copy of "The Writer" magazine - while we were in the elevator going up to our apartment. "Oh. This," I said, looking at the thin envelope on which my name and address were unsteadily printed by an aging typewriter. My first thought was that as an assistant, I'd never send a letter out in which the addressee's name is as high up on the paper as the return address. My second thought, having endured many college rejections thanks to lofty goals and a guidance counselor who provided no guidance whatsoever, was "this isn't good."

And so I read through the letter. Three times. Then my eyes welled, at which point my boyfriend rushed over to me and assured me that I am indeed, a good writer. And I am. Even the letter said that. Praised for my characters, my voice, the way I can draw out relationships between two people who exist only on paper. But my plot, I was told, may not be engaging enough for children. "Nostalgic," was what the piece was called. "How ironic," I muttered, since it takes place in a decade I never experienced, and in the South, a part of this country I've barely even visited, save for a two-day business trip to Nashville and a long weekend with a friend in Chapel Hill.

And so I placed the letter in my coffee table, resigned to filing it away at some point and filled up the rest of my evening with take-out food, old episodes of "The Office," and candy. The following day, when I returned home from work, I read the letter again. I expected I'd be angry. Or sad. Or some other feeling that in general, I try to avoid. But I wasn't. If anything, the 24 hours I'd spent drowning in emails, reality TV, and US Weekly, made me realize this - he's right.

Plotting is not my strong suit. I actually hate it. Characters, and their relationships, are. I'd be happy writing an entire novel about two characters talking - perhaps this is why I like "Before Sunrise" so much? But books also need to be about something happening. Perhaps if I my novel took place in some post-apocalyptic 1956, where my main character was no longer just fighting for her family to be as it "was" before tragedy struck, but also fighting large wolverines who were threatening to eat the whole world, it would have been accepted?

All joking aside, what happened was this: I was given a wake-up call to improve my novel. And so, three years later, I go back and start again.