If I can
shamelessly namedrop a bit, I heard a
great Richard Matheson quote from Jonathan Maberry a while back, which I will
now paraphrase as such.
Writing
is the art of telling stories. Publishing
is the business of selling as many copies of that art as possible.
If you
break it down, this collection of rants is probably 98% about writing, maybe 2%
about publishing. This week, if I may,
I’d like to step away from the straight writing stuff that I normally do and
touch on an issue more on the publishing side of things.
Nobody here
likes getting rejected. Not for an apartment, not for a job, not for a date.
Definitely not for our writing. But that's life. Rejection happens all the time, even to the folks who get
considered professionals. I had a short
story rejected from an anthology last year. I’ve been trying to pitch a book trilogy to
my editor for two years now, and he’s just not interested. Heck, my agent’s not
even that interested in it. These things
happen.
I bring
this up because there’s a meme, or sometimes an article, that floats around a
lot, presenting a bunch of facts that go something like this...
“Famous
writer X showed their manuscript Y to twenty-three editors before someone bought
it. Not only that, bestselling novel Y2
by famous writer X2 was rejected by forty-two editors. Can you imagine that? Forty-two people passed on Y2? Ha ha ha, how many of them
are kicking themselves now?”
This list
can be ten or fifteen authors/books long, and I see it get used a lot to show
how A) I shouldn’t give up hope just because of all my rejections, B) editors
don’t know anything, C) the publishing industry is a dinosaur that’s going to
die out any day now, just wait and see, or D) all of the above.
So, at
first glance, this list can seem like a really awesome thing. It makes me feel more
positive about rejection. It makes me
feel more positive about that stupid editor’s decision. It validates my feelings about big publishing
and their ongoing habit of ignoring my letters.
And this is good, right?
Thing is,
there’s three problems here. And I think
they cause more issues than all this positive affirmation solves. Y’see, Timmy, this list isn’t as clear-cut as
it seems...
First
problem is the false parallel that often gets drawn because of this list. Carrie was rejected many times and my early
book-- The Suffering Map --was rejected many times. Therefore, logically, my book must be just as
good (and just as worthy of being published) as Stephen King’s breakout hit.
We can all
see the flaw there, right? Just because an editor rejected a good book doesn’t mean all the books they
reject are good. Some of them—let’s be honest—some of them are not good. Some of them are bad. We can all probably name one or two folks who
aren’t as good at writing as they think they are. And they can probably name two or three
folks, too.
I can freely admit, I’ve had books rejected by agents. And they deserved to be rejected. They were awful. Honestly, in retrospect, I’m kind of ashamed
I submitted one of them.
The
next problem, to be blunt, is that writers don’t always send stories where
they’re supposed to go. Sometimes we get
overeager or don’t do all the research we should. If I’d
sent Ex-Heroes to Harlequin, of course they would’ve
rejected it. So would the Black Library (a very specific niche press),
Razorbill (a young adult press), or Lonely Planet (a travel book publisher). Getting rejected from these places would be completely
understandable, but would it really say anything about the quality of my
writing? Or that editor's ability to recognize good writing?
So should I
consider those when I say that my book’s been rejected half a dozen times?
Heck, a
while back I spoke with a woman online as she lamented that her story had been
rejected four times. Ignoring the fact
that four times is nothing, it turned out she’d submitted to four radically
different markets. She’d tried marketing
it as young adult, sci-fi, fantasy, and as a horror novel. Which really meant she’d been rejected
once. Once as a young adult story, once
as a sci-fi story, and so on.
Is that
worth calling it quits over?
Also, there
are some writers out there who... well, who can’t take a hint. They’re the literary equivalent of the guy
who thinks if he keeps asking Phoebe out every Friday night, eventually she’ll
break down and say yes. When an editor rejects a manuscript... that’s it. Unless they specifically ask to see it again,
I shouldn’t try to sneak it back in their pile six months later. No, not even
if I explain that I tweaked three of the chapters. My goal is to convince them
I’m a professional, and that’s not how professionals work. But some people do it anyway, often the folks
who tend to do “carpet bomb” submissions of twenty or thirty editors at a time.
If Phoebe
rejects my advances twenty times, is that twenty rejections? Or is it just one (and I’m really bad at
taking a hint)?
So rejection
numbers don’t necessarily tell a complete story.
Finally,
this list implies a really big misconception, something a lot of beginners (or willfully uninformed folks) don’t get. When they hear that bestselling author Wakko
Warner was rejected thirty times, they make the assumption that Wakko sent out
the exact same book with the exact same query letter thirty
times. Thirty editors all saw the same
book that got published, letter for letter, and every one of them passed on it.
As someone
who’s made those rounds, I’d be willing to bet some serious cash that’s not
true.
After a
given number of rejections, a good writer’s going to take note that something
isn’t working. It might be a low number,
just two or three. It might be as high
as a dozen. But only a really deluded
person is going to keep doing the exact same thing again and again and expect
the results are going to radically change.
Personally,
I’d rewrite my cover letter after every fourth or fifth rejection. Sometimes it would be to update it with a new
sale or credit. Other times I’d come up
with a cleaner, slicker way to get a point across. All too often, it was to fix the typo that
had slipped past three revisions and didn’t get noticed until after I sent
things out. Whatever made me do it, it
was rare for more than a handful of editors to get the exact same letter from
me. And different people interpret those letters different ways
Not only
that, if I was lucky enough to get any sort of feedback... I listened to it. I didn’t always follow it word for word, but
if the people who were in the position to buy my stories offered suggestions, I
considered them. The Suffering Map
went through a pretty decent revision halfway through my submissions, and then
another one right after I attended the SDSU Writers’ Conference.
Out of its
dozen or so submissions, I’d guess at least three different versions of it went
out under three or four different cover letters.
So, with
all of this in mind... is it that
amazing a particular book was rejected forty-two times?
It seems
kind of, well, normal, doesn’t it?
It’s always
fantastic to look back at the people who inspired us and how they got their
start. If I want to walk that same path,
though, I need to look at that start without any blinders or preconceptions.
Which is going to make the path look a lot tougher.
But it’ll
also make it easier to follow.
Next time...
I don’t
know. Between the ranty blog and the Writers Coffeehouse, it feels like I’ve
been going on and on about so many things, it all feels a bit repetitive to me.
Is there an appropriate writing topic anybody’d like to hear me babble
on about?
If not...
I’ll put something together...
Until then,
go write.
How do you separate helpful feedback from criticism? I've had several people give me advice, a lot of which is contradictory. I have enough inner demons in my head without being confused by idiots who don't really like my genre anyway. But some of the advice may be good, just not what I want to hear.
ReplyDeleteSo there's your topic. How do I separate good advice from bad?
That's not a bad idea. I touched on that once or twice in the past, but it'd be a good topic to go over again.
ReplyDeleteProbably not this week, but definitely next.
“You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”
― Octavia E. Butler
Love the blog, but (myself included) most unpublished writers think their stuff is awesome and don't realize that it is crap. I know the first full length novel I wrote is crap compared to what I have wrote since. I know that it is better than some stuff that has been published, but it is still crap.
In fact, it wasn't until recently that I realized that I am terrible at writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. I love the genres and I love to read them, but I write crap that feels forced when I write them.
Instead, I started writing horror/ horrific fiction. I reads so much better than what I used to write.
Hopefully, I will be published, who doesn't want to be, but I am having a better time of developing my skill through writing in a different genre than my favorite.