From an article I read yesterday:

Although bought within a month of completion, Prep was rejected by 14 of 15 publishers and, in one case, was rejected, then un-rejected, and then rejected again.

So you want to be a published writer, eh?

Curtis Sittenfeld was a Times writer, among other things, and still she had to engage in the above battle...as do we all (except maybe Tom Wolfe). Spending several years writing is sometimes the easy part!