I looked at my e-mail today and found that a literary agent in New York is interested in reading a hundred pages of a novel I finished revising for the umpteenth time a few months ago. It’s a novel about a high school history teacher who drops all teaching conventions and lets his students teach. Although A Class of Leaders has been rejected many times over the years, I haven’t given up on it because I still think it has great merit. I’ve been querying agents every day during this month of February. (In the publishing business, forget sending anything out in December and January, it’s their vacation time.)
I spent most of the day printing and proofreading the hundred pages of A Class of Leaders. I double-checked everything before sending it out because I wanted to make as good an impression as possible.
If a writer gets rejected, he should keep on sending his work out again and again. If he persists, every once in a while he’ll receive a letter or e-mail with these words: “Send me a hundred pages of your novel.” That’s all a writer needs to keep plugging away at his craft.