Weekly Update 96

Welcome back! This is the place where Seth Oberlender (that is me) keeps the world (that is you) on his journey on becoming a world-famous author. This week… I do not have an agent. For those who are just joining us; I am searching for the right agent to represent me and my book, The Void Full of Starlight. It is important to me that I try traditional publishing to the best of my ability, and here I am doing that. No agent this week, and that is fine. I still try.

In fact, I have come across a very interesting piece of information. When I started this quest I was fixated on Stephen King’s story. Stephen King got eighty rejections before getting his first book, Carrie, published. I was excited when I started to get my own rejections and was excited to see what my number would be. When I passed eighty, I started to be a little upset. That was my benchmark, and it was hard not to feel failure. Then, just the other day, I heard about Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury got 800 rejections before his first book.

I have been on a YouTube rabbit hole when it comes to Brandon Sanderson, and he said that Ray Bradbury “papered a room in his house.” That is crazy! Bradbury is very important in the literary world, and he was rejected more than eighty times? More than one hundred? More than 500?! Crazy.

And so, I am here. I persist. I am still querying and still trying. Another thing Sanderson does is keep an updated progress bar on his website that shows his work on his books. I cannot do that, but I can show how many rejections I have gotten. So, keep an eye out for my counter so we can all see where I lie between eighty and 800.

…fingers crossed I am closer to the former than the latter.