Rejection Friday

Friday is rejection day for Literary Agents. I have found that I get more "No Thanks," form letters on Fridays that any other time. Which's sucks because Friday is the greatest day of the week. Songs are written about Fridays, restaurants are themed around the idea of Fridays, entire drink menus circle around the idea that you don't have to work tomorrow. Why would literary agents want to ruin the best day of the week? Its just rude. A Monday rejection, fine, because your already prepared for your Monday to be crap. A Tuesday rejection you can probably still take with a grain of salt, but not Friday. Fridays should be about cocktails at 5 p.m. Watching late movies, and clearing off the TiVo. Not spending the weekend saying, "Why didn't they like it."
I have gotten some doosies for rejection letters. One said they were sorry but only representing Canadian writers. I thought of suing them for national discrimination. One said they really liked reading my submission, but didn't feel like we were a right fit. Which brought back flashbacks of when I applied at match.com. And then the best and worst form rejection, "As much as we enjoyed reading your submission, we are not going to pursue representation. This could be for a number of reasons, such as: the trends in the market now, the type of novels we are searching for, or simply the poorly executed writing you submitted to us. . ." Well, that's letting me down easy. That is your form letter? Do you have any other rejections, or is that specifically for the truly horrible writers?
But alas, I continue to send out query letters. After each one is tailor written to appeal to the individual agent, just to have a form, "No thanks," letter is kind of insulting. But, oh how I wish I had that power. To be able to run through a series of manuscripts saying, "No, No, No, Crap, Crap, Maybe, No, No, No."
The rejection process has gotten so bad, I am asking strangers on the street if they happen to have a cousin who works in publishing.
When I was a reporter, we would have a lot of self published books come across my desk, because for some reason, my editor thought writing a story about these self published writers would be interesting. Most of them were Worst Case Scenario disaster books, so I disregarded them completely, but one actually caught my eye. A professor at a near-by college had self published a work of fiction it took him almost ten years to write. He decided to have it published by First Books, which is a service that will publish any manuscript, does not provide editing, and charges you for it. Its not necessarily a scam, but its not the best way to get into Barnes and Noble either. And its not that his work was bad. . . its just that it came in two volumes, with a suggested list of songs to listen to while reading it. With the right marketing, editor and a good publishing house, his opus could have actually become something. It wasn't even horribly written, just self indulgent, just like any work that you can tell from reading is semi-autobiographical. And he was going to the newspaper, the college bookstore, all local booksellers, and local businesses to try to sell the book. I was at that University's bookstore recently and saw Volume One. All 500 pages of it. And I got really sad, because all I have written is a 60,000 word novella, and I thought what if these characters I have created never get to be enjoyed. What if no one roots for Veronica to loose her virginity or wishes their college roommate knew how to sew. I have been told by writers that getting published does not solve all of a writers problems. But the idea that someone is out there somewhere enjoying what you created, that's why we do it.
So if you, or anyone you know is in publishing and would like to read a fresh manuscript, let me know in the comments space.
Thank you.