Learning from the Stuff that Hurts

Today I want to talk about rejection.

The bad news is that rejection comes in all forms, in all parts of life.

When you’re in first grade, and you’re the only kid in the class that Susie (who you thought was your best friend!) doesn’t invite to her party.

When you’re ten, and your older brother won’t let you play street hockey with him and his friends.

Rejection feels like this sometimes.

When you’re a teen, and that guy or girl you like doesn’t know you exist, or worse, they DO know you exist and they scorn your interest.

When you’re in college, and your classmate gives you only dismissive comments during the “peer review” of a short story that you slaved over, and you are struck with how subjective this writing business can be sometimes.

THEN you grow up and decide to be a writer. Rejection, that’s just kids’ stuff, right? You grow up and start being accepted, right?

Unfortunately, no. The minefield of rejection just gets bigger and wider as a writer, no matter what path to publication you choose.

If you decide to go traditional, there are crit groups and betas and then queries and agents and maybe, if you’re really lucky/talented/persistent or maybe all three, editors and then eventually readers and reviewers and other authors. And a lot of these people are going to reject your work, and it will probably feel like they’re rejecting you.

Some of them will do it for professional, no-hard-feelings reasons. Some of them will do it graciously. Some of them will do it without thinking. Some of them will do it for callused or stupid or totally subjective reasons.

Rejection feels like this sometimes.

Now let’s say you go indie. In some ways you think the rejection might not be as bad (no queries, right?) and in some ways, you slowly (and with a sinking heart) realize, it might be worse.

Other writers might turn up their nose at your choices or think you’re lesser because you don’t have a lucrative book deal or a Big Six publisher or heck, a publisher at all. 

Book bloggers might refuse to work with you because self published books are too unreliable or they don’t want to be a “slushpile reader,” and some family or friends might not be quite able to hide the disappointed expression that flits across their face when you explain that your book didn’t find a publisher—you decided to grab life by the horns and publish it yourself. You might feel the sting of these slights and prejudices keenly. 

And then there will be your readers and reviewers and peers. Your critics and commentators and everyone who is watching you and judging your success by your Amazon rank or your Twitter following.

It’s gonna be rejection city, my friend.

But don’t give up. Please don’t give up. The good news … is there good news?

I really hope so!

First, not all rejection is personal. Not everybody will like your stuff—and that’s okay. Human beings are wonderfully varied and different. Some people love Twilight and some people love Flannery O’Connor, and some people love both Twilight and Flannery O’Connor.   

Some people will adore your work and gush about it to all their friends. And some people won’t give a crap about the books that you bathed with your blood, sweat, and tears. Or worse, they may be purposely malicious and mean about how they didn't like it—and that attitude may baffle you, it may hurt you, it may wound you deeply.

Not everyone will do this.

But learn to let it go, because there’s something you’ve got to understand. Everybody is different. That’s the way human beings are. There is a kaleidoscope of interests, tastes, and yearnings out there. There’s an incredible scope of perspectives, desires, and preferences.We need to respect that fact that some people love what other people hate.

Now, not everybody will be gracious about these differences of opinion. Some people will probably spew their disdain for your type of work all over the internet, for instance, by making blogs that mock your genre or rip the work of certain authors to shreds like sharks at a chum-fest (yep, seen it!) or writing a blog post about how book covers like yours are childish, embarrassing, or vapid (yep, seen it!) or claiming that your style of book is ruining society/publishing/young minds (yep ... seen it).

But you can be gracious, and if you are, that’s one less person being hateful.

And I think that’s something to strive for, don’t you?

Second, I believe that all the rejection is making me/you/us stronger. Every cut hurts, but we heal. When a stranger, a peer, or even a friend wounds you, take some time to process it. You will probably cry, or rage, or swear at your laptop. (I suggest shoveling mulch, actually.) You might take a walk or eat pancakes smothered in syrup and whipped cream. 

You will feel a tiny bit better. And then … 

Let it go. Please, let it go. Because there’s so much to do and be in this world, and if you hold onto the hurt and let it smolder inside you like a festering sore then you aren’t going to heal.

And finally, the good news …

The good news is, when you learn to accept the rejection and let it go and heal when it hurts, you’re going to get stronger. And better. And maybe even more gracious, because you’ve learned how much it hurts to be the recipient of a thoughtless fellow writer or a dismissive crit group or someone who has no time for a struggling peer or a reviewer who could only cared to list, in gory detail, every single thing he or she thought was ridiculous, absurd, and wrong with your precious book, complete with insults to your intelligence as the author.

So maybe you won’t be that person, because you know what it’s like. Maybe I won't do it either.

 

Now, I'm very sensitive, so maybe I get hit a bit harder by this than some. But I feel like lately the abuse has just been piling on. I wish I could forget a lot of the things spoken to my face over just the PAST MONTH (“I know you fancy yourself a writer, but…” from a friend, no less, “Fantasy books are going to be the death of literature” from another writer who writes literary fiction... 

And there were more instances than those.

Rejection and other hurtful occurrences are unavoidable.

But not everybody does it on purpose, or to be mean, or to be cruel.  But even when people are cruel on purpose … it’s an important lesson.

I can't stop everyone from being critical or cruel or thoughtless.

So I really hope I can learn from it.

Who Are You Writing For?

Sometimes when I'm working on a book or short story, I start to get bogged down in the details, in the anxiety of being perfect and scintillating and sparkling with wit. Is this sentence vibrant, is that verb active, is this character complex/deep/likable enough, is that plot line going to be strong enough? And I lose my way, creatively speaking.

Now, vibrant sentences, active verbs, strong and complex characters--those are valid concerns. I want the story to be the best it can be. I want my writing to be clear, strong, and concise.

But at the same time, I've discovered something about myself.

When I fret about editors and agents and being perfect and what will people on GoodReads think?? and on and on and on while I'm writing the rough draft, it KILLS THE STORY.

Today I had to take a metal step back from a project that I was slowly strangling to death with anxiety and I asked myself sternly: Just who am I writing this for, anyway?

Am I writing this story to impress those editors and agents? Am I writing it for the people on GoodReads? Am I writing it for my mom, my next door neighbor, my sister, my cousins? Who?

I thought about it for a second. And my answer was the one it always is--I write every story for my teenage best friend Nikki and my teen self. If I could put my books in a time capsule, strap that baby to a time machine, and send them back, I would do it. And just realizing that again made me breathe a sigh of relief. It helped me focus. And I realized something else.

You can't write for everybody.

At least I can't. I know I can't please everybody. So why do I even try? Even worse, when I sit down and try to bang out a story that will impress and stir the hearts of a vague, hazy-in-my-mind audience of people I don't know, I freeze up. I get "write fright" (astonishingly similar to stage fright in my case).

So my advice to myself and every other writer out there is this. Don't do it! Don't write for everyone. Write the book that you (or whoever you are writing for) would love. Focus on that, and make it the best book you could possibly give yourself or whoever your lucky recipient/beta reader/cheerleader/best friend may be. And then, when you're done with your first draft and you're editing and cutting and making it pretty and shiny for the rest of the world to see, you can expand that focus.

And who knows? Maybe your book will speak to more people than you thought it would when you wrote it. Everyone brings their own imagination to the table, and we have more in common with others than I think we realize.

But don't let yourself be paralyzed creatively by the thought of "everyone."

Here's a few links to posts I found relevant/fascinating today. The first is a frightening inclusion in Macmillan's contracts that you should be aware of, and the second is a post from the brilliant blog Wordplay about common mistakes editors see. (But don't let it kill your creativity! Absorb the advice and log it away for revision!)


{Macmillan's freaky new contract clause}

and

{The four most common mistakes fiction editors see}

What Scares You About Writing?

News and things

I'm planning on starting work again on my novel. Actually, scratch that. I'm planning on starting work on three of them. Two are re-writes and one is in a stalled-out first draft. These are three projects I feel extremely passionate about and I want to see them all finished.

The hard part right now is deciding which one to pick first.

Sometimes I really wish I could just ASK all the agents--Would you want to request pages for this plot concept? Because I have twenty more if nobody's interested in this one. But you can't do that. Danggit.

Oh, in other (completely unrelated) news, the kitties are getting along famously now. I'm extremely relieved--I'd been reading too many horror stories about neurotic cats that never adjust to the companion adopted to keep them company. But our sweet little cats love each other. They share a food bowl and spend hours snuggling and licking faces. It's been a little over a week, and I don't think either of them remembers that they ever lived without the other.

* pauses for a collective awwww *

The scary part about writing

For me, the hardest part of writing is that fear of failure. When I dream up a story, I see it in my head. Not the whole thing with every detail and every word and every plot twist neatly wrapped up, but the general shape and beautiful, sharp little fragments and snapshots and the FEEL and TASTE and AURA of the story. It's like an addicting mental perfume and I am just in love with it and blown away by it as it comes together. Then when the time comes to do the writing part, I freeze.

What if I write it and it isn't any good? What if I can't capture the things in my head with words? What if I don't know what I'm trying to say?

What if.

I really wish I had some magical comfort to give myself about this. I don't really know how to combat this fear, except for in two ways.

1) I believe it was Robin McKinley who first put me straight about this. On her blog, she wrote about this fear and she said essentially that the story will never be as perfect on paper as it is in your head. So get over that and just write it. So I'm giving myself permission to be a human being and not have a perfect manuscript the first time, or the second, or maybe even the final time. Kind of a scary thought ... but freeing too. If freaking Robin McKinley can say something like that, I feel comforted. Because The Blue Sword was very nearly the perfect book.

2) I read this quote today, and it made me smile. It also made me think. It was by Nic Alderton, and it was pretty long, but he basically said and I'm paraphrasing here, "Think of a story and write it down. What's going to get in your way? Not thinking it up and not writing it down."

So . . .

So I can't overcome failure by hiding or wishing I would just sit down and write a perfect, polished manuscript with one snap of my fingers. I can't not fail by never doing it because I'm scared I won't do a good job. Not trying is the worst kind of failure. I may not get these books right the first time (*giggles morosely* technically one of them is either the 4th or 5th re-write of its respective book, so ... definitely not), but I can do my best.

And at the end of the day, that's all I can really expect from myself.

Chasing Trends

I read this post today, and it had a wonderful quote that I wanted to share:

“Write only what you want to write . . . Especially don’t listen to people . . . who think that you need to write what readers say they want. Readers don’t always know what they want. I don’t know what I want to read until I go into a bookshop and look around at the books other people have written, and the books I enjoy reading most are books I would never in a million years have thought of myself. So the only thing you need to do is forget about pleasing other people, and aim to please yourself alone.” ~ Philip Pullman

I 100% agree that readers don't always know what they want. I certainly don't always know what I'm going to like, and I can be VERY opinionated about books. I have picked up some of the most unlikely books considering my tastes, and found myself loving them--fanatically, passionately loving them.

For instance, how many people discovered they liked vampire fiction after reading Twilight? Or YA, for that matter? How many people don't like dystopias or sci fi but loved The Hunger Games?

I know of more than a few, I can tell you that.

So I urge you, fellow writers, keep writing what you love, whether you think it will fit the current trends/readership tastes or not.

Remember, trends come and go. Fantastic storytelling and compelling, fascinating characters will always be hot.

Now, I'm not advocating that you shouldn't seek to understand trends or follow publishing news and advice. That would be arrogant and probably stupid too. I'm saying don't go out and write a mermaid novel just because a bunch of agents said mermaids were the new vampires even though you want to write historical fiction and frankly you hate urban fantasy. Just don't do it. Don't let yourself fall into the trap of chasing trends. Don't give up just because your book isn't at the top of the "it" list of genres right now.

Besides, how do you think those genres got to be at the top of the "it" list? Somebody wrote an awesome book that helped spark a trend. And it could happen again :-)

Write what you love and create characters and a world you're passionate about and that readers can be passionate about too, because that's what I want to read when I pick up a book, WHATEVER the genre or subject matter may be.