This morning, I checked my author contact email and found three new messages. One was spam delivered through the contact form — a daily occurrence — but two of them were query letter replies from agents. I sent my latest batch of queries out just over a week ago, so it wasn’t a surprise to start seeing replies.

I didn’t open them. I closed my email client, and went about my day.

In the evening, I opened Discord and got together with friends for our regularly scheduled online game. The emails remained where they had been all day, sitting unopened in my inbox.

When the game session was over, I considered reading them. After all, I didn’t want to read them right before bed, and once I opened the replies they would lose their almost supernatural power over me.

Once I read them, they can’t hurt me. But until I read them, they haven’t hurt me yet.

Instead, I open a web browser and catch up on some news. But it’s difficult to focus on the articles, and I know what I should be doing instead.

My heart pounds as I consider the query replies sitting unopened in my inbox. Among them is a reply from the agent I have personally targeted as the best fit for my project out of the bunch, the one I care the most about any possible reply from.

What will it be this time? Form rejection, or feedback? Dare I hope that it’s anything else, that all important third option? You can’t quite let yourself believe that it will be anything but a rejection, but you refuse to seek refuge in the acceptance that it will never be anything else.

No. You must hope, each and every time, no matter how painful that hope becomes.

I close the web browser.

I open the email client.

Both are form letter rejections. My project isn’t the right fit. They encourage me to continue querying, and wish me the best of luck elsewhere.

So, how do I feel now?

The pounding in my chest, the tingling in my fingers, is gone. The dread is gone, replaced by an all-too familiar range of emotions.

Disappointment, first and foremost. Resignation. Inadequacy. Frustration.

And anticipation.

Waiting, already waiting, for the next reply to arrive in my inbox, and for the cycle to begin anew.

I don’t count the rejections anymore. But it’s easy enough to count the acceptances.