the Great Agent Hunt is back in full swing.

Having been rejected by everyone on my first batch list, and a few more I added while querying, I have compiled and started sending out queries to the agents on my second batch list.

And I’ve already received one rejection.

Surprisingly, not taking it too hard. Maybe I just hadn’t had enough coffee when I read the email. Or maybe, unlike my short story submissions, I just have taken on the view of racking up as many rejections as possible for this novel. It feels easier to go at it that way, than to hang desperate hopes on each query I send out.

And I’m constantly learning. For instance, just recently – after 11 or so rejections to date – I have learned that a synopsis, in the publishing industry, is not the type of synopsis I learned how to craft in school. So, I spent several hours on the internet machine, this weekend, researching this new form of synopsis writing.

Part of me is annoyed that I didn’t know this stuff earlier – that I have to learn it anew – and part of me is excited to learn the new thing.

I’m weird like that. I suspect most people are.

So, I move forward, hopefully, having enough information now to not be rejected out of hand, like some bumbling fool who doesn’t even know what standard manuscript form is…

…Hopefully.

Who knows? Maybe it’ll work with this round.

All I do know is that I can’t give up.

Not that I won’t give up, but really that I can’t.

Which brings me to a sentiment I hear occasionally, usually directed at artists of one stripe or another:

“What if it’s just not meant to be? Would you be happier if you did something else?”

If you hear yourself saying that, or a similar phrase, prepare yourself to be slapped and be grateful if the person to whom you are saying such a dreadful thing is too polite to do so.

Here’s the thing about dreams that people without them don’t yet understand.

(I say yet, because at sometime in everyone’s life, they will have a dream that fits this criteria.)

The thing with a dream is, that the idea of being unsuccessful is easier to bear than the idea of not trying.

Failure is just a stage in the learning process, but to give up on your dreams…

…Might as well book a cemetery plot and buy a nice outfit to be buried in.

Because giving up on your dreams is the closest thing you can get to dying while still remaining on this side of the dirt. Give up on your dreams and you wander the land, an empty shell of a human being, just marking time until the Grim Reaper stops by on one last visit for tea.

Having a dream is the reason for living. And everyone’s dream is different, and some people haven’t found theirs yet. But the dream makes individual existence meaningful. It is the thing you do when you’ve managed some free time from the things you have to do to survive.

Doesn’t matter what that thing is, and it does not matter if you make your living doing it.

(Although, speaking as a writer, making my living from my writing is one of my long term goals.)

Dreams, we chase them and try to live them because it would be unbearable to not do so.

I am a writer.

This part of my dream I live.

To make a living from my writing, to have as many people as possible share in my expression and my work, that is the dream I’m still chasing.

And that’s why I keep learning.

That’s why I can’t give up.