Just to let you know, it's been eight weeks of waiting. This means from now until the first week of September, I should have heard back from either Juliet Mushens, Curtis Brown Creative, Jo Unwin, or the Good Literary Agency. I'm nervous. I've been reading a few debut novels in the meantime and it's helped me put things into perspective a bit. I'm at least a competent writer, I know I can tell a story, and I compare fairly with other new authors, I'm just not too sure how convincing I am to agents yet. Even if they all reject me, I'd be so grateful for a personal rejection instead of an R&R, or even a request for a full MS.

Bear in mind, I only started this submission journey in April this year, and so far I've had about five rejections--which is a tiny number. When I was a teenager, I used to visit J K Rowling's website all the time, not only for the fun little games she used to put on there, but to read her biography. She had been accepted by her second agent. Back then, I thought that was the standard. How wrong was I? And for as long as I can remember, the agency that accepted her (Christopher Little) has been exceptionally selective, with their submissions closed for most of the year, consistently, for several years going now. She was lucky, but after reading forums like Absolute Write and Writers and Artists, it's quite clear to accept twenty, thirty, even fifty rejections for one manuscript, with a large portion of those being R&Rs. 

At least by the end of this thing, I'd have developed a thick skin... right?