Rejection Reality

I had very little idea when I started on my writing journey, how pertinent a metaphor “journey” was actually going to be.

As I trundle along, I constantly discover twists and turns, as well as the fact that a point which looks kinda close is actually a helluva lot further away than it seems.  Sometimes the road is smooth (like with my writing surge last November) and sometimes it’s bumpy (like with the agent rejections, or the frequent discouraging thoughts that tell me I’m a crap writer and there’s no point bothering).

After posting my last blog, I started wondering how many people would feel sorry for me because of the rejections, or think that I’m obviously not a “good enough” writer to get published (which may be true!). 

A lot of people have the impression that you write a book and then get it published.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  Writing is a very loooooong path, with a gazillion more hurdles than you would ever imagine.  I’ve blogged about various ones in the past, will undoubtedly blog about more in the future, but for now I just wanted to bring some perspective to my agent rejections.

Being rejected is a completely normal - even expected - experience for a writer. 

The fact that JK Rowling was rejected by TWELVE publishers before one accepted Harry Potter is quite well-known.  Apparently many of them felt that boarding school stories were old hat!  I’ve often wondered how those editors live with themselves!  It’s gotta be pretty gutting to know you passed up on one of the biggest literary phenomena ever :-/

I also found out last week that although Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was published in America in 1964, it took 3 more years to convince a UK publisher to take it on.  You'd have to be blind or illiterate not to see how amazing that story is, surely?!

A friend of mine was accepted by an agent last year, having had about 8 rejections before that.  The thing that really opened my eyes in this situation was that he knew, or had at least met, all/most of those agents.  I’m sure that with that extra level of knowledge and connection (which I don’t have), he would have first approached the ones he felt would best like his books and be the right fit relationally to work with.  Yet it STILL took several attempts to find the “one”.

Submitting your work to an agent isn’t like applying for a job.  It’s like sending a speculative application to a company you want to work for, without having much of an idea whether or not they’re wanting to take on someone like you at that moment (or ever!).

Taking the right story, at the right time, to the right person, is an incredible hurdle and one that writers are usually not aware of when they first start writing.  There are so many people trying to do it too, that agents are often overwhelmed by manuscripts.

It could be massively off-putting.  Some days it IS massively off-putting.  But it cannot stop me, you or anyone else who dreams of being a writer to stop writing (or not to start).  As I was so fantastically reminded by this timely blog post from Jeff Goins a few weeks ago, writers shouldn't write to be published.  We have to just write for the love of writing.  If we do that, then what comes out of our fingers and imaginations is likely to be worth reading…and therefore publishing.  If we write to be published then we’ll be listening more to the crowd and less to the Muse, and will be constrained by real and imagined factors.  Our work won’t have the spark, vibrancy and originality it should.  And it definitely won’t be a fun experience.

So, I’m gonna keep on writing, just for the sheer enjoyment of it…and no number of rejections are going to stop me.  I might need to develop and improve my writing ability.  I might need to write a different story, in a different genre, for a different audience.  But perhaps one day, just perhaps, I might successfully jump the agent hurdle, negotiate the publisher obstacle, and you’ll be able to read some of the work I’ll have been blogging about for years :-)