What if everyone rejects me?

So I have twenty-six queries out right now. No, twenty-five, because I got a same-day rejection yesterday — same day service! I’m going to stop querying for a while (I have close to 45 left to send) to see what happens with this.

I have to remind myself that there are several reasons why queries get rejected that have nothing to do with the quality of my book:

The topic of my book isn’t “hot” right now
The agent only has one slot left in their list and they know exactly what they want to put in it and it’s not my book
My query didn’t “speak” to them or they didn’t “feel” it (literal rejections I’ve gotten)
The agent had a bad day (I’m not kidding)
There’s a lot, a LOT more queries coming in than there are books being sold in traditional publishing

So I’m left with that question, always: What do I do if I get 25 more rejections?

I send the rest.

And if I don’t get an agent then, I tweak things and try again. And remind myself that the agents are rejecting my query, not me.

Wish me good happy things

Well, I got a rejection in a short story contest, but it’s not bothering me too much. I didn’t even get honorable mention. I think they were looking for literary fiction, which is high concept fiction that doesn’t touch genres. I write genre fiction, specifically science fiction/fantasy. I may need to be a little more specific as to who I send to.

I’m pushing myself to go drink coffee and write at the Game Cafe. I don’t think I’ve been there in two weeks, and that might be part of the reason why I’ve been having trouble motivating. When I’m feeling down, the closer I am to my bed, the harder it is to motivate.

My choices on projects are either: 1) keep revising on Gaia’s Hands or 2) keep writing on Hands (No, not at all confusing), the origin story for Grzegorz Koslowski (apologies to Polish readers; I can’t get that little mark through the l to work). I might feel motivated enough to go through Gaia’s Hands today.

Wish me luck and motivations and good happy things. I still have a couple submissions out there and one query to an agent.

The Daily Submission

Strangely, the daily ~~rejection~~ submission gives me more hope than might be expected.

To those who haven’t been following my log, I have started submitting flash fiction/poetry and short stories I’ve written on a daily basis, one per day, using Submittable. This means that, given the odds of being published with all the submissions coming in, I have been receiving a rejection a day.

I don’t focus on the rejections, strangely. I focus on the fact that I, at the moment, have six submissions (counting Prodigies at DAW, a manuscript for a novel) out.

I don’t know how much longer I can continue this exercise, because there are little readers fees nickeling and diming me — four dollars here, six dollars elsewhere. But so far, it’s given me hope.

A Rejection a Day

I think I’m becoming more sanguine about rejection.

I’ll never like rejection, although one woman I met at Gateway Con said that she loved rejection because it meant another person read her stuff and knew her name.

I’ve been practicing my rejections. I’ve got Submittable (a submissions software) bookmarked on my computer and I try every day to submit a little something — a short story, flash fiction, a poem — to see if anything gets accepted. I’m hoping for acceptance. So far, I’ve been getting tiny rejections, and that’s not bad.

Of course, I know myself — I’ll be good about rejections till I get a major rejection. Like the one I’ll ~~probably~~ possibly get for Prodigies.

But even then, I know that a rejection doesn’t mean that my writing is bad, but could mean that my writing was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means that it’s time to examine the piece and try, try again.

The joys of rejection

I am beginning to like rejection.

No, honestly, I don’t like rejection. After all, who likes rejection? Who gets up in the morning and says, “I’m so looking forward to getting rejected!”?

I like improving my work, honing my craft (although that latter phrase sounds so pretentious to me and nothing like the actual process with all its sweat and tears and cutting savage chunks out of a work in progress).

I like looking at an old draft and wondering how I thought that was the book as it should be.

I like the image of myself as someone who cares enough about their work to seek out a developmental editor. Who cares enough about their readers to not put out a rough version of that book.

I also like the idea of getting published, so wish me luck.

Hard Work

Got a rejection for a short story yesterday. I’m not too upset; I think I shoehorned my entry into the theme and it didn’t quite fit. I only have one thing out there now, and that’s Prodigies with a major press. The likelihood of this being accepted is very low, I’ll admit, but it will still hurt a lot if I get rejected.

What from there? Try to shop out the dev-edited version of Voyageurs, which is short at 70,000 words but we’ll see. Work on the rewrite of Apocalypse (which will take a few months at best guess) and send it back to my dev editor. See what tweaks might help Prodigies‘ saleability and shop it back out. Send Whose Hearts are Mountains to dev edit. See if I can salvage Gaia’s Hands in case Apocalypse gets sold and it needs a prequel. Write something else, maybe finish Gods’ Seeds.

It’s hard work, and so far has been fruitless. But if I’m going to be published, I want it to be my best, and my expectations have been raised by beta-readers and dev editors and my own revelations about where my stories could go.

Someday, I hope,my hard work will bear fruit.

Springtime and Struggles

Prodigies just got rejected by a small press — the usual “I don’t think this is a good fit for us”. Remember this is one of about twenty-plus rejections of the seriously revised version of Prodigies.

I’m currently rewriting Apocalypse (which in and of itself used to be two books) to add back some of what I lost in the combining. It’s hard to do right now because of the rejection. It’s very discouraging, and my mind isn’t wrapping around it very well.

Prodigies is still out at DAW, and the highest likelihood (given other evidence) is that they will reject it. Being accepted by DAW after being rejected by a small press would be like getting a Nobel Prize for something that failed to get a ribbon at the county fair. Yet my mind still fantasizes about the next step with DAW as if the next step isn’t a rejection letter.

I’m not sure I like optimism. I feel like I’m just setting myself up for disappointment.

What’s next? I rewrite Apocalypse, which I think will take longer than originally writing its two pieces took. (Writing is easy; doing it right is harder). I talk to my dev editor about what we can do with Prodigies to attract a little more attention to it. I go to that writers’ conference in St. Louis in June.

Or I give up. I’ve talked about that before, but I don’t know how to quit.

Making Peace with Winter

I’m definitely dealing with the winter blahs.

I’m not depressed-depressed, just feeling bleak. My life matches the outdoors — icy gray, devoid of new growth. I have no new ideas for writing right now, no inspirations, no breakthroughs in getting published.

I need to make peace with this winter. Do I always need to be productive, always striving toward something, always trying to make something blossom in my life? I don’t know; I feel best when I’ve just sent out queries, in love with the potential of my work being brought to a wider audience. I feel worst when I get a rejection — I got another one last night. Thus is the way of winter.

How does one weather winter? By sheltering oneself against the chill and waiting. Maybe this is what I need to do — take a break from writing, from editing, from sending out queries, from calling myself a writer. Maybe I need time to figure out how to reinvent myself again, as that’s been a big part of writing for me — trying to reinvent myself.

Maybe I will become something new come spring, when the ice melts and seeds come bursting out of their shells.

A good rejection

Yesterday I got another rejection, but I didn’t feel too bad about it.

I sent the query out for Mythos at least a year ago, and since then, I’ve learned a lot about writing. I’ve learned about developmental editing and beta-reading and about taking out the cherished bits that don’t do anything to further character or plot.

In fact, Mythos as a book doesn’t exist any more — part of it has been cannibalized for the book Apocalypse, which is the next book to go into dev editing. There’s been lots of editing there already. So I’ve gotten a rejection on a book that no longer exists.

Every time I think I’ve learned nothing, I can look back on what Mythos was before its editing and incorporation into Apocalypse. In effect, Mythos was an idea with a lot of character development and a plot driven by nebulous bad guys and disconnected portents. The bones, however, were good enough to develop into a different story.

So all in all, this was a good rejection.

Inching closer to self-publishing

I am closer — much closer — to self-publishing.

I would be giving up a dream. Traditional publishing is my big dream, I think, because it’s external validation. Someone gives you a big shiny star, someone picks you for the dodgeball team. I was always the last one chosen for the dodgeball team. This might be why I have a dysfunctional relationship with the whole traditional publishing process — I want to be picked for the team and I still end up on the sidelines.

I’m still not easy about self-publishing, because I don’t know how to get people to read my book. I can’t just plop my book on the virtual bookshelf next to the other million people on the virtual bookshelf and expect people to read it. The quality of the books on the virtual bookshelf vary from very good to very poor, because not all people who self-publish go through the dev editor and beta-reader process like I do. How do people figure out what’s good to read? The rating system. How do books get read in the first place so they can earn those stars? Advertising and self-promotion.

I have to figure out how to self-promote, hoping I can get someone to read what I have to offer. I wish someone could do that for me, but I don’t anticipate having any money to pay for that. Even offering it for free — you can do this sometimes, but if you make it free all the time people think you’re giving it away because you have to.

I feel a certain peace, now, thinking of self-publishing. My career doesn’t end with the rejections. I am not trapped on the sidelines of the dodgeball game. I will wait out the rest of the queries I still have out — rejections or six months out, whichever comes first. Then, if no agents take me on, I will self-publish Prodigies. And hope for the best.