This is awesome.

I haven’t started querying agents yet—I will do so with a new manuscript in, I’d guess, early 2009—but I’d like to toughen up for that time. Get prepared for rejection. Flush my head down the toilet a few times. Here’s a great way to get ready, a create-your-own rejection letter made by Anna Richenda. Here’s mine:

7/14/2008

EZ Literary Agency
1534 Editor Ave
Rejection City, WA 55555

Dear Writer:

Enclosed please find a few pages my assistant found in the bathroom. Um….I think they’re yours. (Sorry.)

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to consider your manuscript, but I am unable to offer you representation –ever– because, though I loved your novel, frankly, at this point, I’m too busy to know if I really loved it or if I’ve started to hallucinate.

Another reason I must decline to represent you is that the manuscript is 250,000 words long. If I gave this to an editor for anything but a yule log, she’d cry. In fact, when you gave it to me, I cried. In addition, this work is visionary and will likely win the Nobel Prize for Literature–and you know how boring those books are.

A few words of advice. Please don’t get snippy about the wait time. What’s six months in geologic time? My agency get 60 manuscripts a day. Maybe we lost yours. Don’t bug us about it. In closing, you should buy my book on how to get an agent, only 13.95 at Amazon.com! (See your SASE for my book flyer and purchase information!)

The very warmest of regards,

Gifford Regnal-Symes
Mailroom Assistant Trainee.

See? Rejection can be fun!

(Thanks to Literary Rejections on Display for finding this.)