Why Writers Are So Antisocial

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.

Choosing a Title

How do you choose a title? What constitutes a good title?

I have no hard and fast rule per say when it comes to naming my masterpiece scribbles of a genius magnum opus books.

But I have learned a few things over the past two years that I try to keep in mind.

1. A title should grab the browsing reader's attention.

This one is a bit really subjective, but there are certainly words that are more likely to snag a reader's attention than others. For me personally, words like thief, prisoner, blue, break, knife would all grab my attention over words like eternal, whisper, aspire, etc.

2. A title should be easy to remember. 

Have you ever read a summary for a book somewhere and wanted to read it, only to forget the title of the book completely when the time came for you to look it up at the library, Amazon.com, or the bookstore? I have the perfect example. The Perilous Gard was recommended to me, and I completely forgot the name before I could get my hands on a copy. If you can't remember the book's name, and you don't know the name of the author or what it's about, how are you supposed to ever find the book? Do readers a favor and make it easy to remember. I think part of my problem is I didn't know what a "gard" was, and perilous isn't a very grabbing word for me, so I had no way of storing that title in my memory other than route memorization.

In other words--what the heck does the title mean? Make it concrete. (I've read the book, and I still don't know. Can't remember!)

3. The title should evoke some sense of what the book is about.

This example bleeds into the last. I read the following example in the book Writing Historical Fiction. The author, explaining about titles, contrasted the first title of her book, Aspire to the Heavens, with the title she eventually replaced it with--Mount Vernon Romance. The first title means nothing, and is difficult to remember. The second is more concrete and straightforward, and gives the reader an immediate clue--this is probably a story about George Washington. According to her, the book sold much better under the second title (I believe it became a bestseller, actually).

I have to take this opportunity to say something about the romance stuff you see at the grocery store. The Millionaire's Virgin Bride, The Oil Sheik's American Mistress, The Garbage Man's Fiery Affair with the Widowed but Still Surprisingly Virginal Lunch Lady ... It is possible to be too descriptive in the title, I think. But then, I don't think that readership is looking for subtlety.

4. The best length is several words.*

I read this online somewhere (the article actually specified three words), and I don't have any data to back the assertion up. But it makes sense to me--three words are three opportunities to grab your reader with at least one evocative word, and there's more chance for your book to be the first thing that pops up in the search engine or on Amazon with a three word title over a one word title (have you ever tried searching for a book called something vague like Murder? Especially from an unknown author? You'd get a gazillion results from the non-fiction section on top of it).

Now, is more always more?

Well, no. I don't think it has to be a hard and fast rule. But I like to keep it in mind. Does that mean if you have a one word title, you need to change it? Again, no. Lots if one-title books have done very well. Twilight, for instance (although when I first encountered the book, the title didn't grab me, and I read it only based on the urging of a good friend**). Just consider what word you have chosen for your book, and how evocative/striking/memorable that word will be.

In Conclusion

Now, traditionally published authors have less control over their titles, I know. And if you're a well-known author, your title isn't selling your book anyway. Your name is, so I don't think it matters much what you call the book. Stephenie Meyer could call her next release Book Number Six or Another Book By Steph and it would still sell millions of copies.

But indies need all the help they can get.

What are some titles that grabbed your attention and then stuck in your mind until you read the book?

Mine:

Memoirs of a Geisha
The Blind Assassin
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Thief
The Walking Dead
We, the Drowned

Also, some indie titles that grabbed me:


My Blood Approves***
Hollowland




* I wish I still had a link to the website where I read this. I thought I'd saved it in favorites, but apparently not. Sorry!

** In the end, word of mouth is always going to be more valuable than even a very striking title. So write a great story first and foremost!

*** You could argue that this is somewhat vague, but it has the word blood, which caught my attention, and I wanted to know WHAT the blood approved, and that lead to my looking the book up. Bingo. Goal accomplished, Amanda Hocking. It was a book about vampires, but the title wasn't simply a mimicry of Twilight. So it stood out to me.

The Five Stages of Writing a Book

1. The Idea


One of the most magical times for the writer, the idea phase can include daydreaming, staring off into space, goofy smiles, and ecstatic babbling to friends and family. The writer is hopeful, confident, and convinced that this idea is THE. BEST. IDEA. EVER.

No, seriously.

2. Writing

 Now the rubber meets the road, and it usually isn't pretty. There are sleepless nights, screams of frustration, and occasionally entire ice cream cakes consumed. Some writers grimly park themselves in front of the keyboard and type until they have met their word count goals, while other writers employ brilliant strategies of procrastination, like cleaning the garage or mopping the floor or working on other writing projects. Somehow, painfully, the book is written.

3. Editing

Although complete, the book is inevitably a disgusting mess of run-on sentences splattered with adverbs and dripping with excessive similes. The writer must now take a knife to the precious manuscript, ruthlessly killing his or her darlings with the stoicism of a Roman soldier. More ice cream cake is consumed.




4. Self Doubt

This stage may actually appear during many of the other stages. In this stage, the writer may lie on the floor and moan, curl in a fetal position, or obsessively search Monster.com for alternative jobs. Self doubt can be particularly acute during the editing stage.

5. Bookmoon

The bookmoon stage can occur before or after editing, when the writer feels that the manuscript is complete and perfect and unlike any other manuscript ever born from a writer's sweat, tears, and over-consumption of ice cream cake. Like a honeymoon, the bookmoon is a time when the world is viewed through a glow of happiness and the illusion of perfection.The bookmoon phase often lasts until querying begins.

When it melts like cotton candy in the sun.


At this point the writer may feel somewhat disillusioned. She realizes the story is not the most special story ever written. It may not even be brilliant. Just good. Maybe even just good enough. She comes to terms with this, and moves on. She feels mature, grounded, and worldly-wise.

And then, the writer gets ANOTHER idea ...

And it's the BEST. IDEA. EVER.

Author Interviews

I'm hoping to introduce a few new things around the blog, and one thing I thought would be fun--author interviews. I would LOVE to help you spread the word about your book.

So, if you're a fiction author (indie, traditional, small press, Big Six, WHATEVER) and you want to be interviewed on the Southern Scrawl blog, shoot me an email at katydid05(at)gmail(dot)com!

Letting the Story Marinate

I am an analogy fiend. I pretty much think in pictures, and I relate to things by finding similar things I can compare the new thing to in my head. So forgive me if I use a lot of analogies … they work for me.

So anyway, I’m working on a new project, but I really have several WIPs on the table, because of my style of writing. I’m what Mark Twain called a Tank-Filler, meaning that I have to give myself time to let the creative tank fill up sometimes, even in the middle of a project. It’s terribly inconvenient for a deadline. So I try to start working on projects far in advance. Or rather, I marinate them.

If you’ve ever grilled steak, you probably marinated it first. You pull it out of the fridge, put it in a dish, pour the marinade over the meat, cover it with foil, and put it back in the fridge. It may not look like you’ve started cooking yet, and technically you haven’t, but this is an important part of the process.

When I have an idea, I pull it out, ruminate on it, figure out the characters, plot the story, etc. Sometimes I even write 3-5 chapters of the beginning, just to get a feel for the characters and the setting. But this is all prep work. I do all this stuff, and then I put it back for a while in the “fridge.” Because inevitably, I’ll have an even better idea for some key plot point a few days or weeks or even months later, and then I get the click and THEN I can really start. Because once I have the click, I have the voice, and the theme, and the emotional resonance.

I used to just start writing as soon as I had a good idea, and I would just try to muscle through the story whether I knew what I was doing with voice/theme/etc or not. This generally led to me throwing out large chunks of story and starting over. (I still have to do that sometimes, mind you, whether I wait for the story to marinate or not. It isn’t a magic bullet.)

But it’s good (for me, at least) to let the stories marinate awhile too. The best part is that I can do that while writing something else.

Multitasking! *jazz hands*

Do you let stories marinate? Or do you charge into them right away, as soon as you have the idea? What works better for YOU?

Happy Easter!