Dealing with rejections

[Nerds_feather]

Ugg...I know these are a fact of life for writers...especially new/still-unpublished writers, but it's not easy to see something you've worked hard on, and are convinced is good, turned down.

The thing is, you know, intellectually, that you can't take it personally. Editors are often overworked and underpaid, or not paid at all; and slush piles can be so big that there's simply no way they can go through it all while really paying attention to everything. So sorting in "unfair" ways, like saying "oh we already have a space opera story, so not going to read this," or "I'll just put this one in the read pile because he had a story in Lightspeed last year, and this other one in the do not read pile because I don't know who he is" become commonplace. It's not personal. But it still sucks.

For those of you who have experienced rejection from magazines or book publishers, how do you cope? What can you learn from the process that can make you stronger?

[Boneman]

Every rejection brings you one nearer to acceptance...

That, and I look at all the 'experts' who rejected JK Rowling, Frank Herbert, Patrick Rothfuss, - in fact, every single writer out there!

It is hard, but it's like falling off a bike - you gotta get back on, and if necessary, change your route/writing if you get the same rejections for the same reasons.

Finally, without writers there'd be no agents and no publishers: they need us more than we need them!

[Coragem]

There's a book called Imagine: How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer. The author claims that if there's one quality, above all, that separates out creative people that would be "grit" – the ability to keep trying, struggling, trying again.

Sometimes here at SFF Chrons I get a sense that not everyone finds things as hard as I do, but Lehrer's thesis cheered me up! He asserts (rightly or wrongly, but I'd guess mostly rightly) that before and after any fleeting moments of inspiration there are long, long periods of frustration and doubt and perspiration.

In terms of authors, it's hard to think of many recent ones who haven't had to struggle for a long time before achieving a measure of success. Personally, I may never "succeed", but it's with that in mind that I make sure to enjoy the work as an end in itself – anything else being a bonus. Oh, and all the time, I'm improving!

Coragem.

[RcGrant]

Originally Posted by Coragem

Sometimes here at SFF Chrons I get a sense that not everyone finds things as hard as I do, but Lehrer's thesis cheered me up!

It might be their public 'face', as such. Some people are more public about their struggles as a writer than others. I know what you mean, but at the same time I know there isn't a published writer out there who hasn't battled with something. Everyone has their writing demons.

As for the OP, keep plugging. Each of those rejection slips means you have got a lot further than many people who have tried their hand at writing: you have finished, you had the strength to send your book out into the world. This means you can do it again.

If you've had a lot of form rejections without requests for partials/fulls maybe take another look at your query letter and synopsis.

[Mouse]

I expect to get rejected, that way I'm never disappointed.

But, in the words of Chumbawumba: I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down.



Writing is my be all, end all. So I'm going to keep going or die trying.

[Fishbowl Helmet]

I hear you. It's a bitch being rejected, but as said, that puts you one step closer to an acceptance.

What I learned from having been on the other side--former acquisitions editor / slush monkey here--is that editors are craving something good to read like a junkie looking for a fix. The vast majority of the material that crossed my desk was unreadable garbage, to say nothing of publishable. To spend time editing most of what came over the transom would have been like polishing a turd. I don't say any of that to sound like an ass, but it's just as discouraging on the other side--if not more so.

Typically you have a scale of rejection to acceptance. Stock rejection, personalized rejection, encouraging rejection, good but not for us, conditional acceptance, and acceptance. Most writers quit while still at the stock rejection phase of their writing. Each phase whittles away something like 80-90% of writers. And honestly, if a writer can be discouraged, maybe they should be. Look at the shelves, it's not always skill, talent, and craft that gets published, but rather determination.

The best thing you can do is start on the next piece and shop the last one around. Wear those rejections like the badge of honor they are. You've already beat 90% of aspiring writers by sitting down and writing, and another 90% by actually submitting what you wrote. If your writing doesn't have grevious spelling and grammar errors you've just beaten another 90% of other submitting writers.

[Stephen Palmer]

The best way to deal with rejection is to write more, better. In fact, I think it's probably the only way. As the years go by, however, you can always completely rework something that failed before, give it a completely new life; works for me...

[Venusian Broon]

Originally Posted by Nerds_feather

For those of you who have experienced rejection from magazines or book publishers, how do you cope? What can you learn from the process that can make you stronger?

Firstly I totally agree with Mouse. For soundness of mind I think it's better to have a sensible view on the likely outcome. It's not fair, but that's the way the world is, a photocopied rejection slip is most probably winging it's way back to you!

When it does arrive, I take a moment and swallow the bitter news, then I put it behind me and decide on the next course of action. Always move forward. Maybe work it again and send it to another publisher? Or (more commonly!) knuckle down and use the negativity of the moment to pick your work apart, learn from it, set it to one side and write much better.

For me the greatest pain of this whole process isn't really the rejection, it's the blank response back from them with no feedback. This fumbling about in the dark not sure where you actually sit in the big scheme of things is frustrating!

Now I know of course it would be madness to expect the editors to even write a single personal line back to every rejected response, it's not their job to develop us as writers, it's their job to publish. But how close was the story/novel from acceptance? Or was it truly dreadful and thrown on the reject pile within 20 seconds of being read!

[I, Brian]

London agent, Carole Blake, in "From pitch to publication", makes a point that 97% of what is submitted to her is badly written, at best.

So the aim has to be to get your manuscript as polished as possible to get in the last 3%. Then, if you're rejected, it's solely for business reasons, and not because your work is lacking.

That's why I've previously recommend people consider paying for full editing before submission. That way, you're more likely to be in the last 3%.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Use it as motivation to keep improving.

Also, it might not be the right time for that particular story, in terms of what readers will buy. Agents and editors are looking for stories they can sell, otherwise, they don't eat or pay the rent. Most readers are not very adventurous, so tastes change slowly -- but they do change. (A truly exceptional book can trigger a change. If you want your book to be that book, then see the first line of this post.)

If you get a lot of rejections, it might be a good idea to put that one aside and concentrate on something new. Pay attention to what readers are buying, and when you see a more favorable trend just beginning, take a look at your manuscript with a fresh eye, fix any problems that you couldn't see before, and then get it out there again.

[Gumboot]

I find the best way to deal with it is to just not care. I do some acting, and work on a daily basis with a lot of actors, where rejection is even more commonplace and impersonal; you'll get rejected for having the wrong colour skin, or being too tall, or too old, or not pretty enough, or too pretty... a billion reasons you have no control over. They cope with it by walking into every single screen test on the assumption they haven't got it. I think that works for publishing too.

When I send something away, I forget about it, and work from an assumption I'll never hear anything back at all. If they decide they like the look of it, that's a bonus.

[Nerds_feather]

you're all speaking a lot of sense. if you can't handle rejection, the creative arts are not the place for you.

and the point i was trying to make above is that even a lot of actually good writing doesn't get accepted by specific magazines or book publishers, for all kinds of reasons. sometimes it's because they simply didn't have the time to look as closely at yours as they did to an already known quantity. sometimes it's because your story, while good, is too similar to something they published a month prior. sometimes it's because they just happened to get a lot of good stuff at the exact time you submitted your story, and yours just didn't work for them like someone else's. or like 1000 other reasons.

one thing i do is, every time i get a rejection, i start revising the story. i ALWAYS find something i don't like, but somehow missed before. this time--with a story that i'm convinced is good enough for someone--i'm sending it to another writer friend, whose taste i trust, to make critical remarks...because as several of you said, it pays to be as polished as possible.

[RcGrant]

Originally Posted by Nerds_feather

one thing i do is, every time i get a rejection, i start revising the story. i ALWAYS find something i don't like, but somehow missed before. this time--with a story that i'm convinced is good enough for someone--i'm sending it to another writer friend, whose taste i trust, to make critical remarks...because as several of you said, it pays to be as polished as possible.

I think this is good advice, but only to a point. You have to also learn to recognise when enough is enough (in terms of revision) and move on to your next piece of writing.

[Toby Frost]

Well, you're in good company, at least. Here are 15 SFF novels that got rejected, most of them quite well known by now:

http://io9.com/5668053/15-classic-sc...shers-rejected

[Jennifer Cthulus]

Originally Posted by Nerds_feather

For those of you who have experienced rejection from magazines or book publishers, how do you cope? What can you learn from the process that can make you stronger?

Rejection is the default response. They aren't rejecting you; they're saying that your story either didn't fill their need, or they didn't have time to look at it. I feel like there might be a word-clearing issue here. "Dealing with rejection" sounds like you're talking about dating, in which case it would be you, personally, getting rejected. In the case of a story or manuscript, you aren't getting rejected, and your work isn't necessarily either, certainly not in the sense that you might be in a dating context. If you bought a lottery ticket and didn't win, or placed some chips on a roulette table and your number didn't come up, you wouldn't call it "rejection"; you'd just realize that you had the most likely outcome occur and didn't get insanely lucky that time.

Your story could be the best one that anyone's ever written, but if the potential publisher didn't have time to look at it, it won't make any difference. The fact that they sent you a letter at all is a courtesy.

I don't think that there is a need to "cope" with these things so much as there is a need to redefine what happens when a potential publisher doesn't run your story. Kazantzakis said, "Since we cannot change reality, we must change the eyes with which we see reality." I think that's really at the core of this. You put your chips on 36 Red and 10 Black came up instead. You can't realistically expect to win at roulette more frequently than one time out of thirty-two unless you're covering the layout with bets (i.e., submitting multiple stories to multiple markets simultaneously), and even then, most of those bets won't pay. It's just how the game works, and publishing, too.

Unless the editor provides you with helpful comments, I wouldn't worry about trying to learn or grow from the experience any more than I would try to learn from or to grow as a result of an unsuccessful roulette bet. Just try to have a lot of chips on the table every time the wheel spins, and see what you can learn from the ones that do pay out.