This is the way the world ends—not with a bang but a whimper.
So your dream of having an agent who will magically make your novel a best-seller, or even help it become a quiet, but well-reviewed little indie book has taken a beating. It’s kind of like getting your jacket caught in the car door without realizing it, and you drive a long way down a dirt road with it flapping in the wind, and when you do finally liberate it, it’s been turned into a mangled, greasy, unrecognizable knot of fabric with tire-tracks all over it. You go to to the local bar to drown your sorrows and your writer friends, feeling your pain, tell you to keep the faith. Maybe it’s just the beer, but you don’t notice that your friends are looking away, grimacing at their own memories of the long and dirty journey they have traveled on that very same road—with their jackets caught in the car door.