Some thoughts on Rejection and other catch up stuffs.

[erastes]

Been Missing in Action. Sorry about that, I've been zombie-fied and feeling hugely sorry for myself. Have given self huge kick up arse.

It's gone very cold again. Three degrees and IT'S SNOWING. Brrrr.

Some thoughts on rejection:

If something is easy, generally--they say--it's not worth doing.  I can't actually agree with that because eating delicious food is easy, riding a horse is easy (for me) and I love doing both of those, but writing is not easy. Even for those who find the actual putting words on a page easier than many--and I'm talking about the people who can knock out 250,000 words a year with almost no effort, who can write 10,000 words in an evening--even those people struggle with some aspect of the publishing business.

Everyone finds something difficult--whether it's naming the book, developing plot or character, doing the blurb, writing a synopsis, writing a query letter, dealing with rejection.

And it's this last one I want to discuss. REJECTION.

It's not a nice word, and it's laden with so many bad associations. Rejection at school, disappointment from parents and siblings, job application failures, relationship disasters.  The list above (and probably many more) are situations which are unavoidable in life--so why on earth would anyone deliberately set themselves up for More Of The Same by becoming a writer and putting oneself through the seemingly masochist displeasure of rejection?

Who knows. Possibly that the joy of being chosen by a publisher, and having that publisher and an editor who really "get" you and your work is worth all the blood sweat and tears. 

And it is worth it. Believe me.  To quote the film Galaxy Quest - "Never Give Up, Never Surrender."

What I never understand--and Icome across people like this almost on a weekly basis--are those who run off to self publishing, SIMPLY because they've been rejected once or twice.  

Don't get me wrong--I have no down on self-publishing. Some people have been very successful doing this (Christopher Paolini, WA Hoffman and others) - but in the former case he had a hell of a lot of expertise and support and money in his parents, and in the latter case the size of the saga and the characters have grabbed the imagination. Like Paolini, too, some-like Ann Herendeen--have been lucky enough to have their sub published book picked up by a major publisher. But these cases are rare--as rare as working in a cocktail bar and Stephen Speilberg discovering you.

But in general, self publishing--while giving you the majority of the profits and complete editorial control (not always a good thing) won't get you the sales or notice that you might think your book deserves.

So my advice is--KEEP GOING.  If you get rejected; take it on the chin. Search the internet and find all those other cases of famous people who were rejected many many times.

http://www.writersservices.com/mag/m_rejection.htm

Grow a thicker skin--because rejection will do that, and in this business you need one. Believe you me,rejection never gets easy--but it gets EASIER.

Well I think that's enough right now--I'll go into how to react to rejection at another time, perhaps.

Love this art from this guy.http://www.keithrocco.com/

and this is astill from the Lily Black bear cam – you can just see the cub on the bottom right. (click both for larger)

Comments

[aishabintjamil.livejournal.com]

I heard an editor at a conference say once that rejection didn't mean he didn't like you. It didn't even mean he didn't like your story. It might mean he thought it needed more work if there were structural, or even proof reading issues, or it might just mean that he didn't think he could sell it this month/year because he'd bought things in the same genre, or that genre just wasn't selling. It certainly didn't mean you shouldn't try him again with some other story, or try your story with someone else.

It's also such a big part of writing that I felt rather odd, and not quite like a "real" writer until I'd collected one. I had the good fortune to sell my first half a dozen efforts before one was rejected, which was obviously very encouraging, but I did feel a bit like I hadn't quite earned by credentials yet.