Writing Trials and Tribulations: Dealing with The Rejection (Part 2)

So what comes next for the writer, after yesterday's chocolate and tears and grieving for might-have-beens? There is a part of you which wants to curl up, give up, get out of the whole sorry business. But you are a professional. These things happen. You must carry on, or the bread on the table will be mere crumbs, fit only for mice, and there will be nothing to buy more with. "And anyway," says the sensible, practical part of you, patting the emotional, heaving part on the shoulder kindly, "look at what happens when you don't write. Think of the grumpiness and snarling and bad temper when there's a really good idea brewing, and instead of writing it down, you have to change sheets, or iron, or be a teen taxi or pay the bills or sort out mending or any of those other 'have to' things that live in the world outside your head.* And there was that other novel, remember. The one you were having trouble with, and then you suddenly had a brilliant idea about how to fix it? Why don't you haul that out of the folder and have a read?"

As a child, I had a horse-mad granny. Whenever I fell off, she would pick me up, plonk me back on, and we would carry on as if the fall had never happened, me having learned the lesson that falls mean bruises, but that bruises fade soon enough. It is neccessary to get back on the writing horse too, and sooner rather than later. Go back to something you like, and tinker with it. Play. Rediscover the fact that you actually like the act of writing, the challenge of getting words just so, in a way that says exactly what you want, how you want it. Write a letter. Write a poem. Write a blog. Just write. Because once you are back on the writing horse again, yes, the bruises still hurt, but you are high enough up that you can see the world ahead, stretching out in front of you. And you never know what treasure trove of ideas and inspiration might lie in wait just over the horizon. If you don't go forward, you'll never know--and it might be that idea which sells a million copies. As the Bard, (a useful man in times of trouble), said, "Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head." Or, in more modern parlance, "Sh*t happens. Deal with it and move on."

*It has to be said that the activities of ironing and driving can, under the right circumstances, be quite good and fruitful thinking time--but you take the point. In my particular case, when I really want to write, beware the fool who gets in my way.

Writing Trials and Tribulations: Dealing with The Rejection (Part 1)

Writing matters--and honesty about the life of a writer--are the main raison d’ être for the existence of this blog. This is because I am a writer, first and foremost, (although my life is full of many other things, as evidenced by the disparate nature of previous entries here). So today I am going to address one of the trials and tribulations all writers--professional or otherwise--face at many points in their writing lives. The Rejection. And let me tell you a brutal truth here: however many times you go through this, it never gets any easier to deal with and you always feel like a 'failure' as a writer when it happens. Whether this is for five seconds, five minutes, five hours, five days or forever is entirely up to you.

Imagine the scene: your piece of work (novel, story, picture book) is either finished or in a suitable state to be sent off to the Lovely Editor. You send it. You wait. Perhaps you wait a long time (months), perhaps you are lucky and it's shorter (weeks). You are hopeful. Of course you are hopeful. You've worked hard. It's an exciting new idea. You love it. You want to write more of it. Visions of cover art and literary kudos fill your brain with fantasies. And then the email answer pops into your inbox at last. Your heart starts to beat faster in fear and anticipation. Will it be good news? Your finger hovers over the 'open' icon. You press it.

Your heart sinks to the floor with a bump. It's not good news. The Lovely Editor has all sorts of really excellent commercial reasons for not taking this one. But right at first you don't want to know about those. This is because you are sunk in misery and mourning for all those hours and days and months wasted. You are grieving for a literary child which will not now be born--at least not in this form, (though you may cannibalise bits of it for some future but as yet unimaginable project). Rejection hurts, has a physical effect on the body (in my case), of sickness and aching and sleepless sadness. And at the edges, a sort of bleak, despairing frustration and anger too. It's not good to stuff all this emotion away. It needs to be let out; looked at; dealt with, or it will fester and turn to resentment.* But tomorrow--tomorrow will be another day--a day for moving forward. Come back then for Part 2, when I'll (hopefully) have rediscovered how to do that.

* A judicious amount of very dark chocolate is a fine remedy for resentment and grief and a myriad other mental and physical ills, I find. This has been scientifically proven. I forget where I read this useful fact. But it is true.