Kyle asked Stacy Willingham:

How did you deal with the constant rejections? Where do you even start on how to find someone?

Stacy Willingham It takes a lot of time to learn that rejection isn't personal, even though it feels like it is in the beginning. Everything about reading is subjective, so it started getting a lot easier once I realized that every rejection wasn't a rejection of ME or even my story; rather, that particular reader just wasn't my audience -- and that's okay! I don't fall in love with every book I read, either. Agents, especially, have to be extremely choosy when taking on a new client, so try to look at every rejection as you just slowly checking them off a giant master list, which means that with every rejection, you're getting closer and closer to the one that will eventually say yes. It's all progress.

When you're first getting started, make sure you're doing a lot of research on each agent before reaching out. Look for agents who represent the genre in which you write, and maybe even have some authors in their clientele who write in a similar way. Check out their Publishers Marketplace profile and see if they are talking about their "manuscript wishlist" on Twitter; that way, you can personalize your query and let the agent know that you chose them specifically, as opposed to sending out a mass query letter to every single one.

Good luck!

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