I thought I’d be more dramatic about it.

I imagined myself opening the email, gasping, dropping my phone onto the floor and falling to my knees, weeping. Maybe a slow-motion walk to the couch. Maybe a spiral of doubt involving snacks and journaling and questioning all life choices.

But instead, I was taking a break between bouts of folding laundry.

The kids were arguing about something deeply important, possibly involving glue sticks or who gets to sit in the middle at the breakfast island, and I took a quiet moment to go check my email.

A rejection letter. It wasn’t even harsh. That almost made it worse in a strange way. Polite. Professional. The literary equivalent of: “It’s not you, it’s me”.

And that was it. My first official “no” for my book.

I’ve read lots of posts on reddit and elsewhere about authors getting dozens of rejections before a “yes”, so I know this is par for the course. I still have query letters out there, waiting to be read and answered. This is not the end of the book, but it is a significant milestone. My first rejection. Where will the path lead us from here? I’m not opposed to self-publishing, but that will require significantly more active work on my part, and illustrating. Oh, the illustrating.

I’m in the part of the story where I wrote the book, did my best work, and now it’s meeting the world. The world is unpredictable, and that’s ok. There is always the laundry to fold.