After sending the first three chapters of The Charm off to the agent of my dreams, then getting a letter back to say 'WE LOVE IT! CAN WE HAVE MORE?', to sending a further eight chapters, followed shortly by the entire manuscript – I really hoped I was in with a shot of getting published. I'd read so many times that most agents only take on one new writer a year – if you're lucky – and most debut novels never get published anyway, so when the agent of my dreams took The Charm the whole way, I thought I was going to be the one-in-a-million to strike it lucky first time.
But yesterday I received my first rejection and I have no shame in admitting it made me a bit weepy. It was a lovely rejection, mind you, and the agent of my dreams said, and I quote, 'I enjoyed it. I love your gorgeous, sumptuous descriptions and I like your writing', which was great to hear. But at the end of the day, a no is a no, however nicely put. Apparently, The Charm needs to be faster paced and there were doubts over the supernatural element to the storyline, which apparently may put some readers off. I always knew writing about witches and ghosts was a risk but I like witches and ghosts so I threw caution to the wind!
Having said that, I'm not disheartened. Far from it. I have learned a lot from writing The Charm and I am confident it will be published one day. I just need to find the right agent! And I do have a silver lining to my cloud. The agent of my dreams, who first pointed out that my writing style may be better suited to the YA market, wants to read The Boy Who Came To Play when it's finished... maybe it really is a case of if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
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