Belletrinsic

A writer once asked me how to keep your spirits up in the face of rejection and certain doom. Well, not really certain doom, but rejection is all but certain in this writing thing we do, especially if you ever hope to get published.

Me? I like rejection. Not in the typical way, but in the I’ll-prove-you-wrong-so-there kind of way. When anyone tells me I can’t do something, I’m pretty bent on showing them that I can do anything I set my mind to.

Now, at work I send out rejections all the time. It’s not my favorite part of the job because I know how it feels to be rejected, but it has taught me some things about how not to take it personally.

1. Make it the best you can before sending it out. Don’t expect the editor or agent to polish it up for you. That’s your job. Have others read it before you send it out. Make sure there aren’t any large plot holes. Make it so shiny and beautiful that they won’t want to reject it. That last question is key: your book is a product, pure and simple, so it might help if you start thinking of it that way after the creative process of writing is done. Will this product sell?

2. Did you do your homework? If not, you get a failing grade, or in this case, a rejection. Make sure it’s something they publish and don’t try to squeeze by with something they don’t. If you try to be the exception in every case, you’re going to stack up a lot of rejections really quickly.

3. Just don’t take it personally. Really, editors and agents don’t know you and are only thinking of how your book would fit in with their list. Do they feel it’s the right title for them to pursue? Is it strong enough that they want to put a lot of money behind the product?

4. If an editor or agent is kind enough to give you feedback on why the book didn’t work for them, take that to heart. Critiques are like gold for writers, so take them for what they’re worth. Listen to the advice, especially if more than one agent says something similar. There may well be something you can do to fix the problem before sending it out again to only get another rejection.

5. The biggest thing you can do to not let yourself get down by rejection is to keep going, hence the title of this post. And by that, I don’t necessarily mean to keep sending out the same book to the same agents over and over again. That is a bad thing. What I do mean is that you should set that book aside for a while and get to work on the next one.

I’ll share my own experience with this, just so you know I’m not blowing smoke here.

My major goal right now is to get published. I’m working as hard as I can to do so, including spending nearly all my free time working on various projects. To date, I’ve had four different books (one fiction, three nonfiction) rejected, mainly because the timing wasn’t right for them. (And for the sake of being completely honest, some of those rejections have even come from the publisher I work for. Being an editor doesn’t mean I have a free ticket.)

That is really what I mean by keep going. After I got rejections on the first project I shopped to publishers, I realized that the timing was wrong, so that one has been shelved. Then I worked wholeheartedly on my fiction project, but the dominant theme I got in rejections from agents was: “historical fiction isn’t hot right now and I didn’t love it enough to fight tooth and nail to get it published in this economy.” Okay. I understand that. So that book has been placed on the back burner to simmer for a bit while I work on my latest fiction book, which has more of an appeal to the current market.

I’m not saying that you should drop all your writing projects and try to be the next Twilight. That never works, as you can see by the smorgasbord of teen vampire lit that isn’t selling as great as the original. What I am saying is that if editors and agents keep telling you that the timing isn’t right for a project, believe them. Hold onto it for a little while and revisit it later when the timing is better.

But most of all, keep on swimming. Keep writing. Don’t think that those rejections are saying that you’re a crap writer. It may very well be that the timing just isn’t right for your book. So work on your craft and write another one until you do hit the right timing and the stars align on your behalf. If you are determined enough, I’m sure it will happen for you. And for me, too.

Epiphany: Last night I realized that I’m spinning my wheels a bit trying to write the sequel when I should be polishing up the first book so I can start querying.

What this means: It’s back to the grind for me, spending every free moment I have working on revising and rewriting my book. If I push myself a bit, I can get the first revision done in a few weeks, and then spend time fine-tuning from there. After revising the first four chapter last night, I realized that what I’ve got is pretty good, in that I need to fill in places, but it won’t take as long as I’d imagined earlier.

That said, you can expect me to return to my cave for the next few months, emerging for social interaction on occasion but more or less working steadfastly on achieving my dream.

Wish me luck! Or, maybe it would be better if you wished me stamina instead.

I sometimes wonder why I gave up the fast-paced world of journalism for the publishing industry. That thought usually only lasts for a few seconds because I got very burnt out of doing things so quickly. But there was one aspect I loved of writing stories for the newspaper: you got it written in a matter of hours and your readership had it in their hands the next day.

Books, though. Oh, books. They are the love of my life, but they take so long to produce.When I was a child, and even a teen (really up until I started writing my first book in college), I never thought I’d have the patience and stamina to write a full-length book. Even a short 200-page one. Hah. I’ve written about 300 pages in one book, 200 in another, and am still going on others.

Gladly, I proved myself wrong, but the base worry there wasn’t that I couldn’t do it. It was that I wouldn’t want to do it repeatedly. I thought poems, short stories, newspaper articles were the thing because I could see the accomplishment almost immediately.

So why would this be a problem? Because every time I walk into a bookstore, I pine, I crave to see my books on the shelf. No, that isn’t strong enough to express what I feel. In Spanish there’s a phrase—tengo ganas—almost like I need to see my book on the shelf. The reason? To see something that I’ve accomplished, something tangible, something I can hold. For all the hours I’ve spent thinking about my characters, writing and rewriting and editing, I want something to show for it.

Now, I know it’s not going to kill me to wait for publication of my books. I’ll keep moving forward and working on my latest project. But if you tell me that it’s going to take 3 long years at the soonest before I see one of my books in print, then I may very well have to strangle you. And I would probably give up.

Here’s the thing, though. Even though agents, editors, other writers, and just about everyone else will tell you that it will probably take a long time before I get my lucky break, in my heart I don’t believe them. I really think I will be published sooner rather than later. And that—that—is what keeps me going. If I didn’t feel that way, if I knew this was going to be a long, laborious process before I saw some fruits of my labors, I probably wouldn’t do it.

So if you think you need to tell me that it’s going to take 5 years before I ever get an agent, I’m going to politely ignore you and believe what I want. It’s the only way I’ll keep myself going, and with my spirits up.

It will happen for me, and soon. I believe it, and so it must be true.

Yesterday was too much fun, owing to a particular meme on Twitter. Wait for it . . . wait for it . . . #publishingpickupline! Yes, you guessed it. Book nerds and people working in the industry got together and created some of the funniest pick up lines this side of distribution.

I’m not sure how it started, but the results are so hilarious, I had to capture the best of them here for your perusing pleasure. Some of them you have to know about the publishing process (and the terms used) to understand them. If they’re really hard to understand, leave a comment and I’ll interpret for you.

I tried to weed out the really dirty ones, so these are all fairly clean, and most of them had me laughing hard. So enjoy, and maybe add your own at the end. Though remember, we keep a fairly clean blog here.

I’ll start off with my own offering: I wanna see my name written on your spine.

adamgaumont I want you blad

jo_words Five minutes with me and you’ll be sans serif!

WheatmarkSusan I’m not just another pretty typeface. Take me home and try me in layout.

corpuslibris I’d thumb your index any day.

adamgaumont Once you see my em-dash, you’ll never go back to hyphens.

@janinelaporte I’d like to deckle your edges.

kaiwan I know I shouldn’t judge by the covers, but baby I like what I see.

NickDuring With a backlist like that it’s going to take a long time to make up your advance

EGDeedy “how about you get comfortable and slip out of those indies…”

bsandusky You had me at “Winner of the National Book Award”.

AnnKingman Wow, check out the blurbs on that one!

lauramazer i’m dying to shelve you in current affairs.

lauramazer with case specs like that, you should be shelved in erotica

s_m_bailey wanna work my text block ragged?

WorkmanPub You’d look good in the chains, but even better in bricks and mortar

WorkmanPub Don’t worry, the children are in a different catalog.

@hkdimon: What’s a nice girl like you doing with a cover like that?

KatMeyer oh baby, that is one well-built author platform!

@NickDuring: Baby what’s your discount? I want to order in bulk

NickDuring I saw you in the catalog and had to pick you up

@bookoven: i’m feeling naughty: how bout you split your infinitives, and i’ll end this on a preposition.

bostonbookgirl I can help you extend your deadline.

bostonbookgirl I’d swap spot gloss with you any day.

bsandusky Didn’t I see you at the top of the NYT Bestseller list?

bsandusky I don’t care what anyone says, you’ll always be leather-bound, hand-sewn in my mind.

AnnKingman C’mon, give me a little peek under your french flaps …

bostonbookgirl Wanna proof my bluelines, Sweet Cheeks?

AnnKingman Let’s go in the back room and strip off our covers

RandomHouseCA You must have just come from the printer cause you are hot!

kalenski It’s embargoed, but I’ll let you take a peek.

Well, in another attempt to write out some frustrations, I stumbled upon an ambitious project. It will take quite some thought and effort to get it right, but it has promise.

I’ve got too many of these stories stacking up in my brain, though, all of them clamoring for my attention. One at a time, my dears. You’ll all have your chance.

Below is what I’ve written so far, and the first person who can tell me where this is going wins a virtual cookie. (But please remember, it’s a very rough draft.)

Snow

Lub dub. Lub dub. Lub dub.

She could feel it pumping, beneath her skin, beneath her breast.

Lub dub. Lub dub.

Her heart squeezed and contracted, sending blood through her veins and out onto the icy pavement beneath her. She was surrounded by the red aura of her own blood.

Lub dub.

The car that had backed over her was long gone. When would they come? Sirens sounded in the distance, and she knew there wouldn’t be time for her. But for the child. Her child.

Lub . . .

———

Heather Winslow was born precisely at midnight, taken from her mother’s womb though the woman who had incubated her now lay cold in the morgue. Grieving over a dead wife, John barely noticed the utter paleness of the newborn’s skin and the black mat of hair on her head. But he did see that the ruby lips of the babe looked as though tainted by blood.

He called her Heather, after her mother. But no one called her that. She was always known as Snow.

———

(I’m also thinking that Snow will be joined by a few friends, among them Rorie, Ellie, Essa, and Zelle. Solve those riddles if you can. And as has been the case of late, their stories are rather dark.)

There’s a story lurking about my brain. I was driving home tonight from a party, alone, darkness all around. I’ve long thought one of the scariest things that could ever happen would be to sit in the driver’s seat of your car and have a hand grab you from behind. I’ve spent many a breathless moment checking the back of the car before turning it on. Call me a hypochondriac, but it scares me.

As I checked the back seat tonight, something was there, in the shadows waiting for my tired brain to notice. The first inklings of a story, wanting to come out of hiding. Problem is, it’s still there, on the edges of my consciousness, not yet ready to form into coherent thoughts.

In this story, the girl, her name is Christine. I heard a song on the radio about a Christine as I pulled onto my street. It fit. That’s her name. But the man in the back seat, him I’m not too sure about. I don’t think he’s human—at least not completely. I don’t think he’s all bad, either. He calls her name, softly, gently, to catch her attention as he wraps his hand around her mouth. She must be silent, but I’m not sure why. Who is after her? This man wants to help, to stop something, but that something . . . is . . . what?

Therein is the problem. I know her. She’s a poor college student, frustrated after a day waitressing and ready to cry herself to sleep. Only a few more months in school and she’ll be done, ready to find a real job with real money and respect. But this man, this thing in her backseat, he’s going to interrupt that, I just don’t know how.

For me, this is how stories start. The first inklings in the brain, a tickle, almost, of my waking thoughts by something deeper, more primal. People and things inhabit these recesses of my brain, filtering out in a trickle at times, or in torrents at others. Some characters are shyer than others. Not in the traditional sense, but in that they tell me their story slowly, not wanting me to get too close. Not yet.

I have too many of these stories, floating about in my brain. Too many to put them all to words. So I listen to the loudest, the ones who are begging the most to get out. I keep notes on the others, letting them have a few words until it’s there turn.

Christine, now I think she’s going to be a hard one for me. I can see her, crying in the car, leaning her forehead against the steering wheel moments before the hand covers her mouth and yanks her back against the seat. I can see her, but I can’t see him, and I don’t know him. Until I do, she’s going to float at the back of my mind.

It may well be that she’ll speak to me as I drift off to sleep. Or when I’m writing to get my frustrations out, as Jessamine did. Or when I’m eager to put a story to words, as Sarah did. Or when I need to express my darkness, as Patience did. Or when I want adventure in my life, as Cara has been doing.

They’re all women, yes I realize this. It’s because I seek for strong women in my life. I want to be a strong woman. So if I can imbue my characters with love, strength, humor, and persistence, maybe I’ll have some of those qualities in my life as well. I can hope.

It’s late now, and though I have found inspiration when fatigued, tonight is not the night that Christine will speak to me. Maybe soon, but unfortunately, her story may have to wait until I’ve finished telling Jessamine’s. But if Christine will tell it quickly and keep it short, I may be able to purge her story from my life and put it to paper. There she will haunt me still, but only as the specter of a story that has been told and that now is clamoring for an audience.

It’s hard to hear that you’re not perfect, that your writing needs work and that you could do better—much better. But, honestly, that what we all need to hear, at one time or another. As we all work toward the end goal of getting published, improvement is what we should all strive for. And yet, there is definitely a place for support, encouragement, and pats on the back.

So where do we find such support and criticism, all rolled up into one? In my experience, it comes from other writers, from those who understand the difficulties and who keep trucking along despite the discouragement.

I’ve found writers support groups (aka critique groups) both online and in the real world. I wouldn’t say that one is necessarily better than the other because they both provide an essential ingredient for writing—help.

The first writing support I ever received was from an online group of authors at Authonomy. Before that, I had even been afraid to mention to people who knew me that I actually was a writer, though many guessed it.

But the most important lessons I learned from those writers didn’t necessarily have to do with the mechanics of writing, though they certainly helped with that. More, it was good to know that others struggled with writing as much as I did, that they weren’t sure how to take character A from point D to the end at point Z. That they had to work and struggle to find time to write, and that sometimes their spouses weren’t completely supportive of their efforts.

I made friends—some of whom will be lifelong, I hope—with the same interests as myself and who taught me how to be a writer.

Another important part of what I learned was how to critique others’ work in a productive and humane manner. I learned to give as well as I took, and in the process, I could see mistakes that I made just as much as the person I was correcting. Being an editor, I’ve learned this over and again: learning how to pick out mistakes as well as good points in others’ writing makes me a better writer when I incorporate those lessons into my own work.

I participated in that online writing forum for a good six months, but the time then came for me to move on. So instead of closeting myself with my writing, I decided to join a new critique group that was forming in my area.

We meet every three weeks, and as we get together, we share not only our writing, but also our lives and dreams and hopes as writers, and as people. It is different sitting around a table reading aloud to others and hearing them give comments on what I could improve or what they like. There is an intimacy in sharing your words aloud with people who are quickly becoming friends.

The reason I bring this up at all is because of a tiny suggestion someone made during our writing group last night. After I had finished reading from my newest book, someone remarked that maybe I should think of fleshing out the story even more and including a book at the beginning of what has become a two-part series. I didn’t like the idea much last night, but as I think of it more today, I’m realizing the potential in that idea.

In another writing lifetime, if I hadn’t had someone to tell me that, I very well may have written the story only to struggle finding an agent because it wasn’t quite right. The story didn’t begin where it should have; there was more of the tale to tell. It might have taken me much longer to realize this on my own, but because I had another writer critique my work, they set a tiny spark of an idea in my head that will hopefully become an even greater story than what I had before.

So my advice to all writers is to find other writers with whom you can share your work. Critique as a group or individually, but listen to what they tell you, even if you don’t want to hear it at first. That is one of the best ways we can learn and grow as writers, and it is also one of the best ways to motivate ourselves to keep writing and improve upon our craft.

Writing can be a very solitary act, but when we include others in our work, it becomes something even greater. And although support from family and spouses is good, they might not be as completely honest in their assessment of our work as another writer who understands what it means to put words to the page. Seek other writers out. I promise, you’ll benefit immensely from it.