Rejection/Delight

This, from a well-regarded agent with a number of best-sellers on his list:

Dear Alex,

Several of us read THE TREE MUSEUM and we really enjoyed it. You have a lot of talent and it’s a well-crafted novel. It does, though, lack the tightness and structural perfection we look for in multiple voice novels, which are always harder to sell and need to be amazing for publishers to pick them up. Maybe this is a personal reaction, but some of the voices worked better for us than others. But that said, while we’re passing on this, we definitely would like to see more from you.


Argh!!!!! I've now sent THE TREE MUSEUM to eleven agents, and received rejections from eight. And while I fully recognize that eight rejections is nothing in context of what some authors go through, it's beginning to feel dispiriting.

Equally dispiriting, oddly, is the preponderance of really good rejections. Of those eight, only three were stock rejections. The others say things like the above: clearly talented writer, enjoyable characters, well-crafted, almost took this on, and more. I know I should be -- and ultimately I am -- terribly grateful for these thoughtful responses, but I just so desperately want one of these smart, savvy readers to say "Yes, it has flaws, but I love it. Let's get to work."

Maybe I need to rethink the novel myself... take it back and get to work on my own. There is a clear confluence of ideas among the kinder rejections...there seems to be a theme as to why, so consistently, the novel falls just short of something they want to take on.

So is it back to the drawing board? Dive back in and figure out which characters deserve the spotlight and which can recede? Or do I wait until rejection #11 comes through?