: Re: How do you cope with rejection? I know that Bradbury was rejected about 800 times. I know the famous JK Rowling story. Yet the question is lurking in my mind, becoming stronger and clearer

Several thoughts to consider:

There is no reason to expect an agent's opinion to be a better assessment of your writing than a beta reader's opinion.

Agents are business people. They pay their mortgages by finding the manuscripts that will sell, and then selling them for the best price they can. The manuscripts that will sell are those that the public is currently interested in.

Within a week of the college admissions scandal breaking, agents were wish listing a book about college admissions scandals. See? It's a market.

A 10% request rate on queries is a good rate.

But I know people who had a zero percent request rate on agent queries and then landed a big independent publisher. So again, agents are just people, and they receive a dozen or more queries each and every day. They have to wade through all of that knowing that reading a full manuscript will take days of their time, at which point another fifty queries will have piled up in their inbox.

As an assessment of your manuscript, agent rejections are almost meaningless in this context.

And, a ten percent rate is a good rate. Five percent might be closer to the average.

If what you want is to build an audience, do it.

Put yourself out there--find your audience and love them. There are a thousand ways to find readers. Websites and social media, of course. Buying ads. Friends and family. Running a blog, promotional deals.

In the end, all you know is that some people will enjoy what you write, and others won't.

This is true for everyone. I've tried to read Steven King--I don't get it. He's a good writer, but he does zip for me. Not a huge fan of HP either.

My favorite authors are niche--I fall into their worlds like they were built just for me. It is a subjective thing, and it'll be true for all of us as writers, too.

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: Re: How do you cope with rejection? I know that Bradbury was rejected about 800 times. I know the famous JK Rowling story. Yet the question is lurking in my mind, becoming stronger and clearer

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: What are the components of a legend (in the sense of a tale, not a figure legend)? I'm compiling in-world legends for my built world, and would like them to feel like established legends from

: I once had a story set in a future setting and my protagonist was an African American teen. In his introduction scene, he and his friend are discussing the school's upcoming production of

: So there are three things I take into consideration: Is the singer going to be a part of the story? If not than I try to look for songs that are 5-10 years older than the current

: You dress the women however you like, and have them take whatever role they wish in their life. You pay them the same (or more) than their male counterparts for equal work, and most importantly,

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