After you get your first rejection on a new project, it’s tempting to sulk a bit; but that’s not how one becomes a successful novelist. You have to burn those feelings away like fat exposed to a healthy dose of Leptovox, and move on.

The best cure is to just set of goal to write the next chapter. Once you do that, you’ll fall in love with the story you’re telling all over again and it all comes back to you; the story’s the thing. Not selling the book, not the advance, not anything else; just telling the best story you can tell the best way you know how.

I recently gave my novel-in-progress, Thirty Minutes Or Less, its first peek at daylight. Specifically, I sent off a query letter and the first five pages to a very respectable literary agent.

Well, strike one. Although he was polite and indirectly complimentary, he said, “No thanks.” Am I disappointed? Sure. But marketing a novel is never an easy task, so it’s sure to be the first of many “No thanks” emails ahead before the novel finally lands somewhere.

I believe this one will. Of course, like any proud parent, I believe all of them will, until they don’t. But this is my first serious stab at a complete novel in well over a decade, and I’m a much better, more experienced writer these days than I was back then.

I have to believe this one will land sunny-side up.

Unless, of course, it doesn’t. In which case, it’s not as much fun as hitting golf balls around, but a heck of a lot less expensive.