I got an SASE in the mail today. I only had three of those out in the world because my querying has been all about equeries so far. I had one Writer's House query w/ pages and an SASE, and two full manuscripts that were sent by snail mail. This SASE contained one of those dreaded rejections of the full:
Dear Mindi--
I felt that the tone of this mss was too light & sarcastic for the subject matter. Sorry I couldn't be more positive. - [Agent]
Er. Okay?
So, I think I may have mentioned before that I have a theory about myself. (And maybe this theory would apply to other humans, but I am only analyzing myself at this moment.) When I am in receipt of criticism that makes me angry -- whether it's regarding my writing or something else -- most often it's because the other person has a made a good point and I don't want to deal with or accept it. (Or sometimes it's just because they presented their opinion in an offensive/hostile/jerk-off way. But I'm not talking about a scenario like that.)
But this note? Didn't make me angry. At all. This note made me pause and think, Huh. Really? Tone too light? M'Kay.
Maybe the general consensus would be that this agent is right. Maybe the tone is too sarcastic and light. But since I'm not all irate over it, it would seem that I respectfully disagree.
So, that's that!