The Humanely Quick Rejection

I sent off more queries the other day and a proposal to boot. The waiting is difficult, if exciting.
When we submit our work or a query we have the excitement of anticipating a positive response.
Requests to see a full manuscript are a thrill. How can they not be?
We pour our hearts, or souls, our research into the manuscript.
We hope that someone agrees the public will pay good money to read it.
Our thoughts are worth something.

Getting paid to write.
People paying to read what we’ve written.
That’s the dream.

Sure we might say money doesn’t matter because we’ve got something to say.
It matters.
What’s the point of writing if no one ever reads it?

Personal satisfaction counts for a lot. It feels good to write. Completing a manuscript gives me a tremendous sense of accomplishment.
But we want money for it. I certainly do.
I want to see my name on the cover and the spine if a book stocked on a shelf. I want to go into a bookstore and point and say, “That’s me.”
“I wrote that.”

Meanwhile I have the anticipation of waiting to hear from a publisher. Maybe there'll be the thrill of reading the letter requesting a full manuscript.
Rejections are a part of the writing life. I know there'll be the disappointment of reading a "not right for our list" canned rejection.
It's a cue to keep at it, rewrite the manuscript, or file it under learning experiences and write another next book.

And that’s why I’m so grateful for publishers who accept email queries.
Two of the half-dozen I sent to last week took e-queries.
And bless ‘em for their thoughtfulness, they didn’t leave me on tenterhooks. One rejected me within the hour. The other in about three.
It's quick. It's humane. It's two less to hope about.

Rejected - I'm Running With The Big Dogs Again

A reputable publisher turned me down the other day.
He was nice about it. It was a kindly worded rejection about my manuscript not fitting into the company’s current need.
This was followed by a bit of form letter encouragement inviting me to try with a different project later on, and a hearty wish for my good luck in placing the current manuscript.
We writers need a thick skin and a proper-sized ego that lets us to believe that people will spend their hard-earned money on what we create. Rejection thickens the hide, steels the backbone, kicks us in the head to learn more, and keeps the ego in check.
Every writer gets rejected. It’s how we learn.
Certainly some authors do get accepted right away. Some have been picked up at the first place to which they submitted.
Eeek. That’s not good, because it likely means they submitted to a vanity press or author mill. Exceptions exist, of course, but not many. Vanity press authors are printed, not published, and it’s not what I want.
Good writers get rejected. And rejected. And rejected again until one magic day when their talent, perseverance and skill pays off. They go from obscurity to having a book face out on the end caps at a book store.
So rejection is good. In my world I’m running with the big dogs when I get turned down. It’s something worth celebrating.
Ah, rejection. It makes me feel like I belong.

Rejected

Life is proceeding normally. Got a rejection from a major Canadian publishing house today. Standard issue. Said it wasn’t right for their list and included an apology for bringing me disappointment.
Not right for the list covers a lot of ground. It can mean anything from your writing is laughable to it’s the wrong subject for what that publisher puts out. Mostly it’s to ward off stalkers.
Plenty of Golden Word Syndrome suffers cannot conceive of a world where their priceless prose could ever be rejected. If they’re turned down it’s a) a mistake, or b) the editor knows what I can do to make it perfect and she’ll tell me if I call and it’ll be accepted on the next try and if I could just talk to her I know she’d realize the error of her ways and offer me a contract.
Everyone gets rejected. I’m in good company. I need to work on my writing. Keep going. Keep learning. Keep sending out queries and proposals.
That’s what I’ll be doing in the next few days. I’ve let the query and proposal for book three collect dust for six months now. I’ve sniffed it over a few times and licked it clean again. It's ready to go. Bring on the rejections. I’m ready.