What if “computer says no”?

Rejection is bad enough, but what about if you’ve sent your work out to numerous agents/editors with no joy?

This was the question asked by a writer listening to my radio interview last week (see previous post).

The most frustrating is, I think, when the rejections are merely form rejections, offering no feedback or clues as to why the work isn’t of interest. The most likely answer is “wrong place, wrong time” but then again, it could be something in the writing craft that is letting you down. Here’s a short checklist of questions to ask yourself:

• Have you actually “learned to write”? If you’ve never read a book about creative writing, never taken a course or joined a writer’s circle to share feedback, and just dashed your novel off on the computer as it came into your head it is most likely structurally unsound! Novel writing is a craft – you wouldn’t employ a builder who didn’t know how to lay a brick, would you?
• Is your story unique enough? Don’t try and be a poor copy of another author. Your work has to be driven by the strong, compelling voice of you, the writer.
• Have you self-edited? Once finished, put your manuscript away for a while so you’ve had the space and time to be able to look at it critically again.
• Do you know your market? Plenty of people tell you never to write for the market. They have good intentions, they don’t want your story to lose its uniqueness (see above). But write with an eye on the market. If you’re writing in the style of something that was big news 20 years ago, forget it. Look at the trends in the last 6-7 years only.

Want an auto-rejection?

Something that surprises me is when, on receiving news that I have passed on a query, some writers immediately, by return of email, query me with opening chapters from another manuscript of theirs.

Why is this the wrong thimg to do?

Well, firstly I expect you to send me your best (and most likely your most recent) work in the first place. And secondly, if I liked your original submission and wanted to find out what else you had written, I would ask. So when I receive a second submission immediately I am already primed to reject it. Of course, I will look at it, just in case, but I don’t believe I’ve ever requested further material from a situation like this.

So what if you do want to send me something else?

Leave it six months or more, by which time I am highly likely to have forgotten your previous submission and will be looking at your work with fresh eyes.

Dealing with rejection

When you’re an author, dealing with rejection can be really hard. This is because it is almost impossible not to take it personally. I think this is because writing is such a personal thing, and you can (and should) put your heart and soul into your work.

What I hadn’t anticipated was how personally awful and down I would feel when my clients’ work is rejected by publishers, especially when a publisher has had a full manuscript for a while and been seriously considering it. Yes, I can keep telling myself ‘this is business’ but my feelings don’t seem to want to listen and obey.

What are your any tips or strategies for dealing with rejection? Are some rejections harder to bear than others?