Rejection again

It's ironic, after my post a couple of days ago about rejections, that I received one today, from the imprint of a major publisher, saying, "No, but . . . ." It's amazing what a difference there is between "yes, but . . ." and "no, but . . . ."

Anyway, this was the latter, and I get to choose how to look at it--on the "no" side or the "but" side. I pick the "but."

When I last encountered that manuscript, I had no clue how to fix it, and I thought this editor had found it so abysmal that it wasn't worth sending a rejection notice. Instead, he apologized for the long wait (which wasn't as long as some I've heard of), told me his house's list was full, but he and his reader liked it a lot. "Well written and incredibly suspenseful," he wrote.

Well, by golly. Maybe I can work with that. Maybe I can take what I've learned from Frey and McKee and rework the beginning. Maybe I can dust off my agents' list and try a few of them again (the ones who rejected my query a couple of years ago won't remember). Maybe I could even send it to the reputable POD publisher that offered to look at it again if I rewrote it.

It's something, and it's almost done.

Maybe. Just maybe.