How do you deal with rejection?

[Der Blaue Engel]

I've been hiding from DU for quite a while, deciding that the energy I was putting into this obsession was stopping me from focusing on my writing.

So I've spent the last couple of months polishing query letters and a synopsis for my novel, and sending out (so far) 20 agent queries. I have received rejections from all but three. Each rejection upsets me so much that I feel like I am really not cut out for this business. But all I want to do is write.

Does anyone have any advice on dealing with rejection? My partner tells me to just write another book and give up on this one, which just makes me sad, like being told I should try again and have another child, because this one's ugly.

I guess what I'm asking is, at what point do you take the rejections as a sign that the work just isn't good enough? Do you ever? And if not, how do you know you're not that sad guy at the record store who is sure someday he's going to make it as a rock star despite being panned by all the local critics, and none of his friends have the heart to tell him he really can't sing or write music?

[doodadem]

1. Don't know that anyone deals with rejection all that well

BUT, how about a suggestion? Instead of trying to get a novel published (major undertaking), why not start trying to get some short stories published in magazines? Much easier to do. Any number of famous authors got started that way........
Then when you have something of a reputation and better resume, bring out that novel again.
OR--there's a critical shortage of investigative journalists right now. Ever thought about trying that?
Good luck!

[Der Blaue Engel]

8. Actually I do have some short story credits

Not in the same genre, though, so I'm working on writing some spec-fic pieces (the genre the novel's in) and trying to get them published.

Good advice, doodadem. :)

[daa]

2. I'll tell you a little story

Once upon a time there was an author that wrote a book that was rejected by everyone. Now, he could have given up; however, he just knew that his book was outstanding.

Did he give up and throw the Prince of tides in the trash and write another book? No, Pat Conroy believed so much in his work that he self published and got his start to success.

Only you can decided when to give up. Perhaps your partner is right and maybe you should try something else. And just maybe you have the next Prince of Tides and should continue to pursue your dream.

It's up to you.

"You could stock a superb college library or an incredible bookstore just from the books written by the some of the authors who have chosen to self-publish: Margaret Atwood, L. Frank Baum, William Blake, Ken Blanchard, Robert Bly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, Willa Cather, Pat Conroy, Stephen Crane, e.e. cummings, W.E.B. DuBois, Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey, Thomas Hardy, E. Lynn Harris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers, Spencer Johnson, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, Louis L'Amour, D.H. Lawrence, Rod McKuen, Marlo Morgan, John Muir, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Tom Peters, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Irma Rombauer, Carl Sandburg, Robert Service, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, William Strunk, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf."

Good luck.

[salinen]

3. Well you're a writer regardless

of being recognized that way by others. Have a few ulgy children. Then, when you least expect it, a masterpiece.

[Der Blaue Engel]

5. LOL

A few ugly children...why that'd be a great title for a book! :D

[whistle]

4. What ever you do, don't give up writing.....

...keep writing, learn from your mistakes, try again and again and again.

[TwentyFive]

6. There are a million reasons for rejection.

I'm not the kind of person who bounces easily back from rejection. Oftentimes I feel like crawling into bed and just giving up. Being self employed, this is an excellent way for me to go broke and end up out on the street.

Therefore, I am able to pick myself back up, look at the facts the way they are, and set a stratey for doing something. So I either go after different customers, try a different sales or marketing approach, or even modify my product or service. I do something.


I know nothing about the publishing business, but I know there could be a million reasons for your getting rejected. Perhaps there are very few buyers for your particular genre, and that 50 rejections are the norm before it finds a publisher. Maybe the timing isn't right. It is also possible that you are not approaching these people the right way for what you are trying to get published.

As far as your novel goes, there are a few things you can do. I would find other people in the business (perhaps one of the publishers that rejected it) who could give you some feedback. There is an old saying in the car business, "There is an ass for every seat." meaning that it's just a matter of time before the right match comes along. So perhaps the person that will ultimately publish your novel just has not come along yet.

[patricia92243]

7. Do both -write another book, but don't give up on this one. Rejection is

NOT a sign that your work is not good enough. It just means the right person, AT THE RIGHT TIME, has not seen it.

And about that guy at the music store that the critics panned and his friends did not have the heart to tell him he couldn't sing or write music - I believe his name was Elvis Pressley.

[Der Blaue Engel]

9. Heh

Actually I was thinking of a tone-deaf friend of mine, but point taken. ;)

[BigMcLargehuge]

10. here's what I do...

put agent/publisher name in the "rejected" column of my tracking spreadsheet. Throw a few words about the rejection from the rejection letter in the sheet too, date the entry, save the file. Write new query letters for different agents/publishers.

It's an emotionless matter of book keeping now.

I have received enough rejections that range in quality from a multi-page and really informative critique of a short I authored to a post it note stuck to my title page with
"sorry, out of forms" scribbled on it.

I've don't give a shit about rejection anymore, I was upset for about the first year that I was writing and submitting, and constantly rejected, then I became desensitized to the whole thing. Now I just submit and move on. I haven't had any real success with fiction in 15 years either. I've written four full length novels in quality ranging from so bad it's possibly a violation of the Geneva Convention to ask anyone to read it, to goddamn great. I've also authored several dozen shorts in various genre.

None of them has made me a penny. I sold exactly one fiction piece in 1996 for the princely sum of two copies of a magazine that went out of business two issues following the publication of my story "Freedom Smells like Red Wine Vinegar".

What I learned from the fiction writing process was how to write crackerjack non-fiction, and my actual job now, and for the last 6 years, has been writing and designing telecommunications training courses. I've also written a weekly column and I currently write movie reviews for a website gathering half a million hits a month.

But I'm still writing fiction. Still editing some of my better older stories. Still sending manuscripts out. Still getting rejected. At the very least I will have a whole mess of stuff to share with my son when he's old enough to read.

[Blue_Roses]

11. Don't let rejection stop you from writing

especially if it's your passion and it sounds like it is. I think rejection should be renamed "re-route" because that's what usually makes the difference in getting something noticed or not--whatever the passion is. :)

[oneighty]

12. I cry a lot.

Hee hee hee.

180

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. cry, hide under the blankets, eat... and THAT is just from

THINKING about POSSIBLE rejection. *lol*

[SmokingJacket]

14. You have to decide that it doesn't matter if you never get published.

You have to do it because you like doing it, even IF you turn out to be the sad record store guy. Emotionally disconnect from the submission process -- you can't control how anyone reacts to your stuff, so focus on doing the work.

Continue sending your first book out, but put the emotional energy into the new one. (Books are NOT like kids -- some ARE better than others!)

Almost everyone I know who's published a book has an unpublished first novel at home in a drawer. It's the book that teaches you how to do it, and the one that gives you the confidence that you CAN crank out all those pages.

GOOD LUCK -- don't wait around at the mailbox/phone! Just write.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

15. Listen,

the publishing business is like any other. It can break your heart, because you want so much to be part of it.

You have to think: do you want to be a great writer, or do you want to be a published writer? (No, in this scenario, right now, you can't pick both.) If you want to be a published writer, keep on doing what you're doing. You won't feel any better, you won't get anywhere, and you'll end up semi-nuts.

If you want to be a great writer, start writing. There's something in you that wants to be written, but it won't get done if you let yourself get all tangled up in the idea of publishers and agents and query letters and all those things that - I'll tell you that next - are just eating up your time and your heart.

My agency - a small, exclusive outfit in midtown Manhattan - gets approximately 50,000 unsolicited queries a year. In the twenty-five or thirty years they've been in business, they have gotten - are you ready? - exactly one new client out of that group. She turned out to be a really successful mystery writer, and then - it's a lovely business, really - she went with another agency.

That said, I am telling you, not in an unkind way and not to be mean or to hurt you, because I truly do know what it's like to face that kind of rejection, but because you should know, that sending query letters cold to agents is not going to get you anywhere. In my limited experience (my first book came out only six years ago), I can say without too much fear of contradiction that you're batting your head against a brick wall.

Get credentials. Get other things published. Make contacts. Get to know writers, real writers, not the people who say they're writers because they want so desperately to be real writers, but writers with agents, writers with connections, writers who function in the real publishing world - the one in midtown Manhattan, where deals are closed over lunches - writers who can, when you've done something really special, refer you to their agents.

That's how I did it, and that's how every writer I know did it. It's a lot of hard work, and what you want - to have your name on a great-looking book in the front of Borders window - isn't going to be readily forthcoming.

But, you'll be on your way, and that, in the end, is how you might - you just might - arrive at the destination for which you now so long.

Of course, this is only my experience, only my opinion, and you could say to yourself, "What the hell does OldLeftieLawyer know?"

Odds are even that you'd be right.

In any event, I wish you the best of luck.