The Great Thing About Rejection

This from one of my favourite agent bloggers, the Denver-based Kristin Nelson of the Nelson Literary Agency:

Considering that 90% of the population wants to write a novel but never have the guts to go for it, being in the game is a huge thing. Even though it sucks, rejections are a badge of honor. A rite of passage for when the publishing day finally arrives. Every published writer has a story of a rejection.

You can’t tell a good keynote speech without it! More

Yes that's Hugh Grant starring in the Barbara Cartland film The Lady and the Highwayman. No, it's got nothing to do with anything.

So Rejection is good. It's ammo for that bright, sunshiny day when you deliver the keynote at a writers' conference. Keep a file, paper your walls with them (but use blue tack as you'll need to take them down to wave around during your speech).

Isn't it a long, long process though?

Writing the novel takes ages. Then sending it out and getting rejections takes years. Then maybe you get the agent. And then the agent sends it out and it STILL takes ages.

The longest stage has to be the period between writing it and getting the agent/publisher.

This is not just because it's a tough competitive market yada yada yada.

It's also because it takes a long time for a creative person to develop eyes that see.


When I wrote my first novel, I immediately stuffed it in an envelope and sent it to friends to read. The objective? Not to get critiques but to gain praise. It is a normal part of the creative process to really really think your first crappy effort is art.

One friend bought me a coffee at a Costa and gently pointed out that I'd sent it out with, not only hundreds of typos but non sequiturs, unbelievable plot twists, ridiculous coincidences, and a hopelessly ambitious structure that would give even the most accomplished editor a bad migraine.

It took me months to sit down and start writing again. I had to come to terms with the fact that it would be YEARS before I had anything publishable. (And yes, that was years ago)

But how to EXPEDITE the process?

Joining SCBWI - attending conferences and learning about the craft/trade - was a step in the right direction.

Finding a critique group that fit - not just no-hopers like myself but critiquers who know their stuff - helped too.

If you find it hard to take criticism from your peers, then you can go to professional editors like Cornerstones run by Helen Corner who, when asked if getting published is a tall order, replies:

"It's doable."

Cornerstones also runs workshops like this one on September 29. I was listening to their promotional mp3 (you can download and listen to it yourself with your media player at this link) and thought Helen's tale of rejecting potential gems in the slushpile when she worked at Penguin particularly poignant:

Part of my job was to process the unsolicited pile which are books sent by authors and not by agents. Penguin at the time had an automatic rejection policy, as do most publishers these days and quite often when I was going through my meter-high piles .... I would think what if the author had started in chapter two instead of chapter one, or developed the character more quickly, or written in a more show not tell way ... (Writers) really do need professional feedback and they should make it part of their writer learning curve to know how to look at what they'd written and to know not to submit to an agent or publisher unless they really are presenting the best writing that they possible can.

Which brings me neatly to an inspiring line from author Liz Rettig's often hilarious tips for writers on her website:

Expect rejections. There are many reasons for rejections only one of which is that your writing is rubbish.

My Friends Are Dragging Me Kicking and Screaming Into Facebook

So you see, though I've got a page on MySpace and a page on Facebook and a page on Bebo and a page on YouTube, and a page on Ning (bet you haven't heard of Ning) I was only doing the social networking lark as RESEARCH.

Honest!

My main photo-sharing thingy is Multiply, which a lot of people haven't heard of and that's because it mainly populated by my family and friends in the Philippines and frankly, I was happy to keep it that way.

The main thing I've learned from social networking is that the "social" is just as important as the "network". You can network meaninglessly with as many people you don't know as you want on MySpace, on the off chance that someday you will need to tell all these strangers that you've published your book. But there's nothing like a network that actually interacts with you - it takes years of blogging to get more than four comments (unless you join the Nude Blogging Movement, and then you get an instant fan base).

Or not.

I find Multiply the most rewarding because it's where my "social" is ... I only have to put one silly photo up of my husband and within seconds I have 27 pithy comments from my best friend in Washington and 27 comments from my brothers and sisters in Manila (there are many of us), discussing in detail every aspect of my husband's nose, ears, hair, etc.

It's very rewarding (unless you're my husband).

Anyway, my Facebook contacts may have already noticed that I have increased activity on Facebook. This is because my Multiply friends are slowly moving to Facebook. So now I have to go on Facebook to leave insults on their albums. Boo!

Meanwhile, one of my fave YA authors John Green (Abundance of Katherines) posted this fab link imagining HAMLET's newsfeed on Facebook!

This brilliant cartoon by Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle

AND here's an image of VP hopeful Sarah Palin that I took off the facebook page of Maureen Johnson (Suite Scarlet, 13 Little Blue Envelopes). Yup that's a bear. And yup, that's a giant crab. It really focuses the mind on the coming US elections.


THESE are the things that make all that wasted time on Facebook seem worthwhile.

Having Sold My Soul to Google Will There Be Anything Left to Sell to Amazon

I lifted these from
TheChetan.com.
Thank you!

It was Google's tenth birthday yesterday and I feel almost nostalgic.

I've pretty much sold my soul to Google ... my browser opens straight onto my iGoogle page so I can check out the latest things on my friends' blogs and my news subscriptions, I search the net with Google, I search my computer with Google Desktop, I keep my calendars on Google Calendars, I use Google Docs for my spreadsheets, I blog on Blogger (which belongs to Google), I even have a Picasa account (Google's photo service).

Google itself says it isn't quite decided when to celebrate

Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake.

So happy birthday, Google, whenever you decide to have the cake!

Having sold my soul so comprehensively to Google, I wonder if I have a little something left for Amazon. Ebooks have been in the news with the recent launch of the Sony Ereader. The one I've got my sights on is the Amazon Kindle.

Some folk might accuse me of being party to the death of the book, but I'd rather take a cue from the FT Weekend's Jan Dailey:

So is this, finally, the death of the book? If so, it may be a death that heralds a rebirth of reading

Dailey predicts that digital readers will revolutionise not just the way we read books but the way they are published - indeed, we may have to re-invent the agent-writer-publisher relationship:

It’s more likely, though, that these devices will mean a substantial shift in the way books are published. Conventional publishers of treeware will be under pressure to create every title in e-book format at the same time as on paper; they’d be crazy not to. Soon the e-book market may overtake the other. And in that case, who really needs the publisher?

Writer’s agents are the principal quality-filter these days, as well as increasingly responsible for the editing that most British publishers no longer bother with – so what is to stop writers and their agents doing deals directly with (say) Sony/Waterstone’s? And if a few libraries and Luddites and the author’s mum want a paper version, that can be easily arranged in small-run special editions.

But I have no intention of abandoning the purchase of books.

Like Dailey, who writes how she "used to hug one in bed instead of a teddy", my family has a long history of bedding down with books.

Here is picture of my daughter Mia, age 2, sleeping with Jill Murphy's Peace at Last - such a lovely book, I am always giving away copies as presents!

Funnily enough, the thought of books was high on my mind this weekend. Husband has just finished an epic DIY job of installing these book shelves and I've been dusting off the books we've got in storage and putting them up.

The epic DIY job, finished at last.

A lot of these books have been tucked away for ages and suddenly I came face to face with these books from my childhood.

A set of Collier's Junior Classics (1962) and The Children's Classics (1961)

My parents purchased these sets from the Reader's Digest man who used to sell them from door to door in Manila. I smuggled them back to England from the Philippines in my hand carry luggage one year when my bookish brother (who would have nicked them first) wasn't looking.

I could of course, purchase most of the classics in the set from any Borders or even from Amazon. But there is a special something about these books, yellowing and ragged with age and survivors of typhoon flooding and childish ill-use. When I flick through them again, I am transported back to that FIRST time I read them, the thrill of the Prince and the Pauper or Tom Sawyer or Heidi or Robin Hood or Black Beauty unfolding for the first time.

And that's why I will never stop buying books.

Even after I get myself a Kindle.