you won’t be the last person to say no to me

I know, it doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, does it? I mean, as a battle cry, it’s got some flaws. It should be more like, “You’re the last person who will slam the door in my face”, right? Or, “I’ll show you!”  But I’m not that confrontational. Ask my students. They’ve become accustomed to my long sighs and shrugs. 

But it’s pretty much what I said to myself for a long time, every time, when an agent rejected another query for another novel.  I’d yank up my yoga pants and think, this guy ain’t gonna be the one who gets to shoot this horse. And I’d take my tea and a bag of licorice and head upstairs and stare at the bay and shuffle through my books and eventually, put my fingers back on the keys.

It doesn’t matter what you love to do or if anyone else loves for you to do it.  You gotta accept that people will say no. In my case, easily 800 times over the last twenty years. I guess at some point someone really was the last person to say No to This is Not a Werewolf Story. I don’t remember who it was.

Because of the one person, Minju Chang of Bookstop Literary, who said Yes.