Rejection
I use Grammarly for free proofreading because sometimes people give other people Amazon gift certificates for mentioning their product in blog posts. *
But that wasn't what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was rejection. From time to time, I finish a novel (at the moment, it's been something of a long time since that has happened, and it looks to be something of a long time until it happens again. Largely because I spent the better part of last year flattened by mononucleosis, but also for other reasons. Anyway.)
After I finish a novel, the next step is to look for an agent. With each project, I've been getting closer, in a sort of Xeno's paradox fashion-most recently, I had a nice phone conversation, followed by a regretful email a few days later. Next time, I hope to see how exactly I can get closer to having an agent without actually having an agent. Maybe there'll be something about the agency agreement that I'll object to? Something to look forward to, anyway.
In the course of looking for an agent, I will occasionally read the advice that agents give about looking for an agent. Some of which seems reasonable, some of which doesn't, and most of which falls into the sort of broad area in between. One bit from that last category has to do with rejection. "Don't blog about rejection," in specific. "It's negative," some say, "and it shows your writing in a poor light."
"Bother that nonsense!" some of you might say, particularly if you were brought up in a refined environment, and also if you have small children nearby who echo phrases that they hear. And you'd be right to say that, of course, for reasons that I shall get into later. But first, I will explain why this bit of advice doesn't go directly into the "does not seem reasonable" bin.
While the reasons that they give aren't very good, agents will occasionally look at the blogs of authors they are considering recommending. And if you blog your process of seeking an agent with updates like, "13 rejections from my first choice agents, 1 requested partial!" "28 rejections, 5 no responses, 2 requested partials, and 9 somewhat oracular responses which I'm taking to mean requests for fulls from my second choice agents!" and "Fine! I guess it's time to send out queries to all the loser agents I don't want in the first place!" it might dampen the enthusiasm of agents included in that last category. I mean, largely because they're losers, but whatever.
To some degree, that applies to stories as well-it's not necessarily great practice to announce that a particular story has gotten three hundred and seventy rejections before sending it out to the next place, as it might cause the story to be viewed with some suspicion. Also, odds are good that the story is terrible, because that's just too many rejections.
However, getting back to why you were right in the first place, the reality is that if you are not willing to accept constant, crushing rejection for years, you might want to do something other than trying to write fiction. Alternatively, you can write fiction, but just be better at it than me. Because where I'm at, I've got a handful of shiny yeses to measure against a giant steaming pile of no. **
To give numbers. For 2013, I have 59 rejections on 26 stories. Fortunately, I have a total of zero sales of new fiction which I can use to weigh against that. Admittedly, the mono wasn't just a matter of me doing things more tiredly and slowly, though it was that. It was also a "Flowers for Algernon" type thing****, where the disease made me stupider, though I wasn't entirely aware of that while I was in the middle of that. So I wrote worse stories, and handled things less ably while I was sick. Still, it's not a record to inspire confidence.
And that's the thing. If I needed the record to inspire confidence, I'd be done. I can't necessarily put my finger on what it is that's giving me confidence *****, but when I look at a story that I've written, and I think that it's good, I can keep sending it out, despite all evidence that I should stop doing that. Which isn't to say that I'm not willing to take criticism on board when it feels right, but when it doesn't, I can look at a number of similar rejection letters about a story as evidence that there's something about editorial work that makes people wrong in the same way. *******
There's another problem with blogging about rejection, and that is that it's hard to be interesting about rejection. But it's also hard to be interesting about what you had for lunch, or what you think about Syria when you don't speak Arabic and have only recently learned how to find it on a map, or celebrities, and that doesn't seem to shut anyone up.
Anyhow, I seem to have reached the maximum number of asterisks that I can count********, so I think I'll leave it at that.
* This post was sponsored by grammarly.com.
** (I suppose that some of this is because of me, but I largely blame you, the readers. Those of you who are also editors are more directly responsible, but it's for the same fault. If you'd just find my stories more entertaining, they'd be easier to sell. It's that, or take the Johnathan Franzen approach, and blame the internet. Or possibly a penny-pinching old German lady? Strange dude, that Johnathan Franzen.***)
*** For a full examination of Johnathan Franzen's issues with elderly Germans, see http://the-toast.net/2013/09/16/rage-jonathan-franzen/
**** One of the things that I only just realized is that the reason that "Flowers for Algernon" works as a story is that it's not just a speculative premise about mind enhancing drugs, it's a thing that everyone goes through in their lives. And that there is an unutterable bleakness to the aspect of the human condition that the story's about, which is hard to see when you're on the upward slope.
***** There's a thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect******, which I assume has no relevance here whatsoever.
****** Google it yourself, why don't you?
******* Grammarly.com found 2 critical writing issues and generated 3 word choice corrections for this sentence alone. See note 5 as to why I haven't done anything about it.
******** It's eight. I think.
But that wasn't what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was rejection. From time to time, I finish a novel (at the moment, it's been something of a long time since that has happened, and it looks to be something of a long time until it happens again. Largely because I spent the better part of last year flattened by mononucleosis, but also for other reasons. Anyway.)
After I finish a novel, the next step is to look for an agent. With each project, I've been getting closer, in a sort of Xeno's paradox fashion-most recently, I had a nice phone conversation, followed by a regretful email a few days later. Next time, I hope to see how exactly I can get closer to having an agent without actually having an agent. Maybe there'll be something about the agency agreement that I'll object to? Something to look forward to, anyway.
In the course of looking for an agent, I will occasionally read the advice that agents give about looking for an agent. Some of which seems reasonable, some of which doesn't, and most of which falls into the sort of broad area in between. One bit from that last category has to do with rejection. "Don't blog about rejection," in specific. "It's negative," some say, "and it shows your writing in a poor light."
"Bother that nonsense!" some of you might say, particularly if you were brought up in a refined environment, and also if you have small children nearby who echo phrases that they hear. And you'd be right to say that, of course, for reasons that I shall get into later. But first, I will explain why this bit of advice doesn't go directly into the "does not seem reasonable" bin.
While the reasons that they give aren't very good, agents will occasionally look at the blogs of authors they are considering recommending. And if you blog your process of seeking an agent with updates like, "13 rejections from my first choice agents, 1 requested partial!" "28 rejections, 5 no responses, 2 requested partials, and 9 somewhat oracular responses which I'm taking to mean requests for fulls from my second choice agents!" and "Fine! I guess it's time to send out queries to all the loser agents I don't want in the first place!" it might dampen the enthusiasm of agents included in that last category. I mean, largely because they're losers, but whatever.
To some degree, that applies to stories as well-it's not necessarily great practice to announce that a particular story has gotten three hundred and seventy rejections before sending it out to the next place, as it might cause the story to be viewed with some suspicion. Also, odds are good that the story is terrible, because that's just too many rejections.
However, getting back to why you were right in the first place, the reality is that if you are not willing to accept constant, crushing rejection for years, you might want to do something other than trying to write fiction. Alternatively, you can write fiction, but just be better at it than me. Because where I'm at, I've got a handful of shiny yeses to measure against a giant steaming pile of no. **
To give numbers. For 2013, I have 59 rejections on 26 stories. Fortunately, I have a total of zero sales of new fiction which I can use to weigh against that. Admittedly, the mono wasn't just a matter of me doing things more tiredly and slowly, though it was that. It was also a "Flowers for Algernon" type thing****, where the disease made me stupider, though I wasn't entirely aware of that while I was in the middle of that. So I wrote worse stories, and handled things less ably while I was sick. Still, it's not a record to inspire confidence.
And that's the thing. If I needed the record to inspire confidence, I'd be done. I can't necessarily put my finger on what it is that's giving me confidence *****, but when I look at a story that I've written, and I think that it's good, I can keep sending it out, despite all evidence that I should stop doing that. Which isn't to say that I'm not willing to take criticism on board when it feels right, but when it doesn't, I can look at a number of similar rejection letters about a story as evidence that there's something about editorial work that makes people wrong in the same way. *******
There's another problem with blogging about rejection, and that is that it's hard to be interesting about rejection. But it's also hard to be interesting about what you had for lunch, or what you think about Syria when you don't speak Arabic and have only recently learned how to find it on a map, or celebrities, and that doesn't seem to shut anyone up.
Anyhow, I seem to have reached the maximum number of asterisks that I can count********, so I think I'll leave it at that.
* This post was sponsored by grammarly.com.
** (I suppose that some of this is because of me, but I largely blame you, the readers. Those of you who are also editors are more directly responsible, but it's for the same fault. If you'd just find my stories more entertaining, they'd be easier to sell. It's that, or take the Johnathan Franzen approach, and blame the internet. Or possibly a penny-pinching old German lady? Strange dude, that Johnathan Franzen.***)
*** For a full examination of Johnathan Franzen's issues with elderly Germans, see http://the-toast.net/2013/09/16/rage-jonathan-franzen/
**** One of the things that I only just realized is that the reason that "Flowers for Algernon" works as a story is that it's not just a speculative premise about mind enhancing drugs, it's a thing that everyone goes through in their lives. And that there is an unutterable bleakness to the aspect of the human condition that the story's about, which is hard to see when you're on the upward slope.
***** There's a thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect******, which I assume has no relevance here whatsoever.
****** Google it yourself, why don't you?
******* Grammarly.com found 2 critical writing issues and generated 3 word choice corrections for this sentence alone. See note 5 as to why I haven't done anything about it.
******** It's eight. I think.