1. We do not troll the internet looking for your faux pas. Really. We often read the blogs of our Author-friends for fun, because our Author-friends are very clever and charming people, but we for reals do not care if three years ago you left one comment on one agent blog being all like WTF PEOPLE WHY HAS IT TAKEN YOU SIXTEEN YEARS TO READ MY GODDAMN MASTERPIECE WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP IN THERE LOOKING AT YOUTUBE VIDEOS OF PUPPIES OR SOMETHING. Honestly, it would not affect our decision to reject or request even if we DID google you and, say, found a post on your blog along the lines of THE REJECTIONIST IS A HUGE CRYBABY FEMINAZI MORON. The ONLY thing we care about is YOUR WRITING. Lots of agents do very much care what you say in public forums (for (hopefully) obvious and very good reasons, and we are certainly not suggesting you should be a douchebag all over the internet); but also lots of agents don't spend much time on the internet at all unless it's to watch Youtube videos of puppies.

OBVIOUSLY the odds are very slim that a person who thinks we are a crybaby feminazi moron is smart enough to write a good book. But just so you know, we don't care what you think of us. We care about your book.

2. Writers get signed out of the slush pile ALL THE TIME. WE SWEAR TO GOD. WE HAVE SEEN IT HAPPEN. WE HAVE LISTENED IN ON THOSE PHONE CALLS. Writers also get signed by meeting agents at conferences, by being agents' dentists, by randomly charming people they do not know are agents, by mystical coincidence, and by being famous, it is very true. But listen up, little ones: we have been reading slush of one kind or another off and on for almost ten years now (!!! GET US OUT OF HERE!!) and we are STILL happy when we see a query that is actually delightful. Promise. We are even happier when the manuscript is delightful, too. Promise!

3. Maybe what you need is a break from the internet altogether! Try it! Don't look at publishing blogs. Don't write about writing on your Author-blogs. Don't look at agent blogs or other Author-friend blogs or Rejectionist blogs. Don't look at Galleycat or Publishers Lunch or even Bookslut. No looking up debut authors on Wikipedia to see if they are younger than you! No refreshing your browser every sixteen seconds to see if someone you follow put up a new post! No obsessively reviewing every post ever written on how to write a query! It's kind of amazing! Freeing! Joyful! Try it for more than seven minutes! Try it for a day! TWO DAYS! A WEEK! Need help? Mac Freedom can help you!* Go outside! Take a goddamn walk in a park! Pet a fuzzy animal! Eat a tasty treat! Try the revolutionary process of WRITING WITHOUT FEAR (of failure, of being rejected, of the imminent collapse of publishing/rise of e-book/pending mass polar bear extinction and total disappearance of polar ice, of the logistics of the royalty schedule for a book you haven't even finished let alone started querying for let alone published, of whether some agent is RIGHT THIS MINUTE finding a comment you left on an agent blog three years ago being all like WTF PEOPLE and blacklisting you from ever being published anywhere in the entire universe). NO INTERNET. WRITE YOUR BOOK. It is kind of amazing how much less anxiety we feel about publishing when we are not, you know, reading about publishing all day.

4. There is not actually an industry blacklist anywhere. As far as we know. Maybe that's something agents get handed at their top-secret annual meeting with Xenu, to which the assistants are not invited.

Okay, that's all. Tomorrow we return to being hateful. SACK UP, BABIES!

*Seriously, this app changed our entire life. We feel totally cultlike about it. Just looking at that glowing blue circle is now enough to soothe us.