I looked at my e-mail today and found that a literary agent in New York is interested in reading a hundred pages of a novel I finished revising for the umpteenth time a few months ago. It’s a novel about a high school history teacher who throws the book away and lets his students teach. Although A Class of Leaders has been rejected many times over the years, I haven’t given up on it because I still think it has great merit. I’ve been querying agents every day during this month of February.(Forget December and January, in the publishing business it’s their vacation time.)

I spent most of the day printing and proofreading the hundred pages of A Class of Leaders. I double-checked everything before sending it out because I wanted to make as good an impression as possible.

If a writer gets rejected, he should keep on sending his work out again and again. If he persists, every once in a while he’ll receive a letter or e-mail with these words: “Send me a hundred pages of your novel.” That’s all a writer needs to keep plugging away at his craft.