A Writer's Notebook, Day Nine-Hundred-And-Ninety-Two

The agent query that I was excited about came back without a manuscript request.  It was a short, but encouraging note, stating that the work itself sounds quite good, but that it would not be a good fit.  I have seen many similar responses, and I am feeling really lost as a result.  It would be one thing to hear that I need to do this or that to make the work better, but I have been told explicitly not to change the work, not to even try editing it any further until I have an agent who wants to represent it.  Even if I decided to dismiss that advice (which came from an agent who read the whole manuscript), that is not the point.  The thing is: what do you do when you are told you have work that is ready but no one wants it and nothing seems to make a difference.  It is not a matter of improving the work, so what am I supposed to do that is not just hoping to be lucky.  I've been working hard, doing all the things I am told to do, but I can't get anyplace, and when I ask for help, I am told to just keep failing in the exact same ways until something that is entirely outside my power changes, and it does not feel as if I can survive that much longer.  I need to make progress towards my goal, or, at the very least, have a real sense of how to determine whether the actions in my power are bringing me closer to it.  But each individual attempt is it's own event with an unrelated outcome, and no information is ever shared that provides an ability to take steps towards improving.  That is to say: I don't mind if I keep getting rejections, but I want to be learning something useful from this process that I can be certain is bringing me closer to the goal of getting an acceptance.  If all I am doing is throwing things out and hoping, it is going to destroy me.  It already is.

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