The Success in the Failure

My Facebook friends and Twitter followers already know about this, but I thought that, considering the subject matter, it bore repeating as a blog post.

Yesterday morning, a little less than one month since I sent out my first real manuscript submission to a publisher, I received an email back from said publisher.

It was a big, fat rejection letter.

And it wasn’t even an overly impressive rejection. It basically read, “Ms Tobin, sorry, but your story isn’t for us, good luck in the future.”

Now, here’s the thing. I’ve been expecting this since the second I hit the “send” button on my submission. While I wanted to have a glimmer of hope, I had a dozen voices shouting pessimism (reason?) at me. I thought, “It’s my first submission, and who the hell ever gets published on their first submission?” and, “You don’t even read romance novels, so what makes you think you would be able to write a decent one?” I wasn’t terribly hard on myself, I was just trying to be reasonable. I didn’t want to get my hopes up when the chances are so terribly low of getting a deal with a publisher these days, particularly on your first try.

But, here’s the other thing: I’d be a dirty, dirty liar if I said the rejection didn’t sting. Despite my 99.99% certainty that nothing good would come of my submission, there was still that tiny little glimmer in the back of my mind, holding out hope. And that glimmer imploded in upon itself when I read the words “your project isn’t right for us”. I had a wave of disappointment, followed by a wave of anger, followed by a wave of almost physical pain – all this within a 30 second span.

But then something wonderful happened. It was over. After weeks of checking my email fifty times a day, wondering if I would get a response today or not for months, telling myself that it was going to be a rejection but also praying for it to be an acceptance, it was over. My story was rejected. Submission saga complete. Nothing left to worry about.

I learned several things about myself and about the system by submitting that manuscript…

For one thing, I learned that I hate the traditional publishing process, not because it rejected me, but because of the time and waiting required. I only had to wait a month to get that rejection letter, and the waiting drove me right up the wall. Most big publishers quote up to 6 months or more, and many of them make it very clear that they expect to be the only one looking at your manuscript at any given time (if they find out you’ve submitted to multiple publishers at once it’s an automatic rejection). So say for a moment that I start submitting my zombie apocalypse novel and that it takes 5 publishers before one says yes (which is generous, as some people submit to dozens of publishers before hitting pay dirt). Now say that each of those publishers requires that you can’t submit to anyone else until they’re done with you, and say that each one of them quotes a 6 month waiting period, which they dutifully use every second of. That means that it would be two and a half years before that fifth publisher decided to take a chance, and that’s before the long process of contracts, cover design, copyediting, etc that can also take years. In other words, by the time my zombie apocalypse novel was actually in print people might not give a flying rat’s tail about zombies anymore, and my sales might be abysmal. Alternately, I could self-publish the book by the end of this year if I put my heart in it…I’d have to do all the cover/editing/marketing work myself, but it would be out years earlier, during a time when there are tons of zombie movies and games around because zombies are in right now.

Another thing I learned is that I’m not nearly as delicate as I thought I was. Sure I had my moment of depression that sparked anger and frustration as well, but it was all over in less than a minute. I didn’t mope or tell myself that I got rejected because my story was crap. I didn’t turn into a miserable ball of self-loathing. I had a burst of emotion, and then it was over. I’ve moved on. Back on the road and heading into the great beyond. No turning back now.

And another thing that I learned is that I’ve gathered a great community of family, friends, and fellow writers around me over the past months. When I took to Facebook and Twitter to announce my first official rejection letter, the response I got was just wonderful. Amongst the messages I got were:

“Some day your writing will pay off for you. You love it too much for it not to!” – my father

“Just save it for when you do sell your book. You can frame it next to a glowing review.” – @writerreese

“Celebrate! It means you’re a dedicated, professional writer!” @SaraMThorn

There were many others, and it really gave me a burst of confidence, an invaluable thing to me. So I want to say thank you. Thank you to the people who rallied around me to make sure that I knew this wasn’t the end of the world (or, at least, my writing career), thank you to all the writers and references that have let me know what I can expect from both traditional publishing methods and self-publishing methods, and thank you to the editor who gave my manuscript a chance and was relatively quick in letting me know that it wasn’t what they were looking for. Now I can move forward, which is the direction that one definitely wants to be headed in.

The Hardest Part is the Waiting

Look at that title, and tell me that it’s not the truth in many things. Think about things you do on a daily basis, things you deal with regularly, big events in your life…what was the hardest part of them?

WAITING. Dammit.

My Facebook friends and family already know this, but a few days ago on August 28th, I submitted my supernatural romance to a publisher. This is my first ever manuscript submission, and there were lots of things about it that were terribly difficult. The editing process was horrible. Trying to figure out how to get Scrivener to properly format the results was a right awful pain in the ass. Researching all the info necessary to make sure that I was doing everything exactly the way the publisher requests was an enormous headache. Writing a query letter that sounded confident but not cocky was painful. And trying to write a synopsis that explained my story without making it sound idiotic was possibly one of the hardest things I’ve ever written.

But none of those things is the hardest part. You know what the hardest part is.

My manuscript is out there now, and I can honestly say with great confidence that I’m expecting a rejection letter sometime in the future. I’m not worried about that part because I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this is almost definitely what is going to happen – not very many writers get a contract on their first ever submission, after all. But it’s not the looming threat of a rejection letter that is difficult; I’m actually kind of looking forward to it, because a rejection letter is just one step closer to an acceptance letter.

But it’s the waiting. God dammit, the waiting.

This, I think, is the main reason that a lot of writers are going indie or self-publishing. The waiting. It’s awful. The particular publisher that I submitted this manuscript to aims to respond to all submissions within three months. And that’s short compared to other publishers. Some publishers quote 6 months, others up to a year.

I’ve been waiting for 6 days and I’m going insane; imagine if I had to wait for up to a year.

The hardest part, I’m telling you. Bar none.

This experience, thus far, has taught me that I’m not a fan of dealing with traditional publishers. So, I guess, if anything, I’m learning. So, go me?

Fellow writers, what is your experience with waiting on traditional publishers? Did it drive you completely up the wall? Was it worth the wait? Did long waits affect your decision to either remain with traditional publishing or move on to other options? Please share!

Be Brave. Stand on the Edge of the Cliff.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it is my belief and experience that writers (and artists as a whole) are a naturally self-depreciating bunch. Oh sure, we all have our moments when we feel on top of the world and are convinced that our writing is the most brilliant thing to come into this world since Shakespear, but the majority of the time we’re meak little creatures, hiding in a corner and insisting that if you just give me more time it’ll be perfect and then you can read it, I swear! Admit it, fellow writers: does this sound like you?

There are two major downsides to this kind of attitude. One, no story ever written was perfect, especially from the writer’s point of view, and trying to make it perfect will only drive you insane. Two, if you never get to the point where you’re ready to show you work to another human being, you’ll never go any further. Sometimes you have to be willing to put yourself out there, if only to know that you were brave enough to do it.

A little while ago, when I wrote my first “Things I Know About Kids” post, I had a thought…the kinds of things I was talking about (and planning to talk about) seemed like the kinds of things that belonged in a parental magazine like Today’s Parent. I considered this concept for a little while, even going so far as to look into how one would submit an idea to a magazine, but in the end I didn’t do it. Why? Because, like many writers before me, I look down on my own writing. I thought to myself, “There’s no point in persuing this idea because it’s never going to happen. Why would any magazine want to publish my awful schlock?” Admit it again, fellow writers: how many times have you thought this exact thing when considering a submission or query?

It wasn’t until three days ago that a little light flicked on in my head. I recalled a ridiculously cheesey quote that my husband once brought up back in high school: “You always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Yeah, it sounds hokey, but it’s true. You can’t succeed if you don’t set yourself up for the possibility of failure. That’s just the way things work. Not many people in this life are lucky enough to be “discovered”. Most of us have to put in the hard work, put ourselves out there, and risk failing. And when we fail, we have to pick ourselves up and go through it all over again. Glamorous? No. Necessary? Yes.

So with that on mind, on Friday I took some time and wrote a query letter that made me cringe, but that I knew to be more-or-less the proper way of doing things, and I shot it off to Today’s Parent. I’m not expecting to have my idea accepted (though it would be nice!) but what I realized was that there was zero chance of it being accepted if I never put it out there.

It’s a scary thing putting yourself at the edge of a cliff with the chance of being pushed off, but if you don’t do so you can never see the view. No, I honestly don’t believe that Today’s Parent is going to write be back and tell me I had a brilliant idea and they want to publish it immediately, but it still feels good to have taken that step, to prove that I’m brave enough to stand on the edge of the cliff. And should I, in the following weeks, recieve a kindly-worded (or even not-so-kindly worded) rejection letter, I shall do as many before me have: I’ll print that sucker out and stick it to my wall, because each rejection is just a step toward acceptance.

If you’re an unpublished writer, have you ever submitted anything for publication, or sent a query to a magazine or other venue? How did it make you feel? If you’re a published writer, how many rejections did you get before getting something published? Do you keep your rejection letters? Please share!