on Jane Friedman site:

Well, to be honest, the first thing I did, after my second manuscript didn’t sell, was spend a week wallowing in despair. But I’ll get to that.

First, let me set the scene. I have been trying to become a published novelist for nearly twenty years. First, I got my MFA and wrote several terrible drawer novels. Then, in 2014, I signed with an agent but, after working with him on revisions for nine months, we parted ways and I went back to the query trenches. When I couldn’t find another agent, I wrote more books. I queried for many years with multiple projects. Eventually, I found a new agent. We worked on revisions to my YA suspense novel and I thought: This is it. Finally, I would have a published book to my name.

But the book didn’t sell. It was rejected by every editor who read it. No worries, I told myself. While on submission, I’d been writing and revising another YA novel, so my agent sent that one out to editors. When, a year later, that second YA novel died on submission, it felt like a little piece of me died, too.

I had written another manuscript while the second book was on sub, and it needed major revisions, but I struggled to find the motivation to do them. Give another year of my life and another chunk of my soul working on yet another novel that wouldn’t sell? I felt more depressed than I’d ever felt in my life.

So here’s what I did.