Rejection, Vegas, and the Half-Eaten Bootie

So the day before my trip to Vegas (baby) I got a rejection from the agent I had been so hoping would like my story. Oh, well. Good news is that she gave me feedback, which is better than a form letter (and a sharp stick in the eye) and shows that perhaps it has some promise. But she was confused about the world I created. (I could easily fix this). And didn't feel a connection to my charactions, which is the part that totally worries me, because that may not be an easy fix. Ugh! Then I think about the speeches Cabot gave and Dodd at the RWA conference this year. Cabot in particular talked about receiving countless rejections about how her story wouldn't work. How her style wasn't right for the market or that people couldn't relate to it. Now her style is emulated throughout popular fiction. Not to mention the popularity of The Princess Diaries which went on to become a successful movie. This is my first rejection on my story. So how much should I take it to heart? Like some of my friends and fellow writers have said. Keep going and if you recieve feedback from others in the same vein then take another look at it. I know that there' still more work to be done. I may return to the first three chapters (which is what she read) and do more revisions. But right now I need to keep plugging away. I'm past the 200 page point in my rewrites, which is good. My husband read a few chapters on the trip and has a few corrections, which I'll do before I had them over to my critique partners. Such a long process, but with every step I'm learning so much and improving. But it seems like it never ends. A fellow writer that I met at RWA last year has a Regency coming out next fall. She just received 7 pages of edits from her editor to input before Feb. Seven pages!!! And she'd gone through so many interations already before being accepted. So crazy!

Needless to say, I drowned my sorrows (and money) at the roulette wheel and with several screwdrivers and cosmos. I also learned to play craps. Well, let me rephrased that. I learned how to lose at craps. We saw the show Ka at the MGM Grand, which I highly recommend. It was the most amazing production I'd ever seen. The stage actually lifted and pivoted and turned and at several points rose to a 90 degree angle to create a wall which the actors climbed. The athleticism and grace of these performers blew me away. It's not like the other Cirque du Soleil performances, because this one tells a story of two twins separated when their parents, who are the king and queen of the land, are killed. It's like an acrobatic opera. Fantastic!

When we got home, I got news that my dog was sick. She ended up in the vet hospital because she had ate half of her bootie (which we had used years ago to deter her licking her paws). I'm not sure where she found it since I had put it away awhile ago. But it was such a big piece that it got stuck in her small intestine. They had to cut her open and remove it. Now she has staples and looks like a Frankenstein dog with the metal going up her stomach. She's doing fine now. Pouty but fine.

Now off to work and writing. So much to catch up on. I read some books and will post reviews tomorrow. Yeah!