My first experience with rejection

This is a short excerpt from my book, Bastard Husband: A Love Story. I've been querying agents (with varying degrees of effort) for close to a year now and have racked up a lot of rejections. Fortunately, I learned a bit about rejection early on...

I grew up in Albany, New York, where I lived for the first forty-three years of my life. I’m the oldest of five kids spaced over a fourteen-year period, which means I was in ninth grade when my little sister was born. My mother and the girl who sat next to me in French class were pregnant at the same time. Yuk.

I was a shy and quiet child, a bookworm with big dreams. At age eight, I wrote a letter to whomever I thought was in charge of the TV show Bonanza suggesting they write in a part for a younger sister, to be played by me, of course. I offered some possible storylines and assured them that although I had never actually been on a horse, I was certainly willing to learn. In response, I received a colored glossy photo signed by all the Cartwright men, but alas, no offer of an acting contract.

A year later, I sent Johnny Carson a few of my favorite jokes, fantasizing about how the audience would roar when he opened his monologue with, “How did Captain Hook die? … He wiped himself with the wrong hand!” Fancying myself as quite mature for my age, and to address Johnny’s older, late-night demographic, I also included what I thought was a solid demonstration of my ability to write adult humor: “What’s pink and squishy and lies at the bottom of the ocean? Moby’s Dick!”

Those were my first experiences with rejection, which even back then I regarded not as a reflection of my own shortcomings, but the result of someone else’s lack of insight.

I still think that way about the agents who've said, "No thanks, not for me"!