Well, New York finally found my manuscript. It came back today, sitting on my doorstep in a big brown envelope, with a very nice rejection letter inside.

When an editor says "You show great enthusiasm and potential in your writing", it's hard to mind a rejection.

She also said "While your premise is interesting and your characters delightful, I'm afraid...the pacing was slow at times, the dialog overpowered the exposition, leaving the story sometimes too Spartan, without enough description to always place the characters in their environments.". So at least I have some places to start improving - someone who knows has finally told me something of immense value.

Now all I have to do is do something about it. Learn from it. And keep sending her work, because she's asked me to. At the end of the day, you really can't beat that kind of rejection.

Onward.