Penelope Garcia Is Finding My Literary Agent

Every writer is told to brace themselves for rejection—to develop a thick skin, to expect disappointment, and to accept that the inbox will mostly echo back silence or polite nos.

So when my writing partner and I began relentlessly querying literary agents, I braced for the wave of self-doubt I knew would hit. Each time I pressed “send,” I whispered to myself: their decision does not define the worth of our novel. Our book is already extraordinary. We poured our lives into it, stitched it together from sleepless nights and a shared dream—it’s the love child of our collaboration. A book that didn’t exist until a nightmare woke me in the middle of the night, and I shared it with a friend, then suddenly, our book was alive.

So far, we’ve received four rejections—and countless ghosts. Silent disappearances, queries sent into the void, swallowed by a dark, endless corridor. Each one tugging at our hope, fraying it thread by thread, until all that remains is a quiet, hollow ache.

I thought I knew how rejection would feel. I prepared for anger, fear, and disappointment. But I did not expect the emotion that came most often. Rejection—even its ghost—makes me smile. Each “no” carries proof that our words—and the world we created—exists beyond ourselves. They travel. They land somewhere. And they wait, patiently, to be found.

It reminds me of Criminal Minds—not the killers, not the danger, but of Penelope Garcia. 

If you’ve never seen the show—though I hope that’s no one—Garcia is the technical analyst for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. While the profilers chase shadows, she sits at her glowing computer, narrowing millions of possibilities down to one. She transforms chaos into clarity. That’s exactly how I imagine the process of finding the right literary agent.

Right now, we’re staring at a list of thousands of potential agents. Thousands. It’s overwhelming, abstract, almost impossible to imagine the ending. But with every rejection, Penelope narrows the list. One name crossed off. One data point added. One step closer to the right match.

Rejection isn’t failure—it’s information.

My responsibility is simple: keep writing. Keep querying. Keep feeding Garcia more data. Keep sharpening the list until only one name remains.

I am not discouraged. I am not defeated. I am building a profile. Somewhere out there, the right agent is still on the list.

And Penelope is going to find it.