Rejection and the Writer

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Help! Character development problem

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Paul Whybrow

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Jun 20, 2015
Cornwall, UK
As I contemplated plot developments in my new novel, wondering whether to include an idea I've had stored away in my bonce for decades I recalled a book cover for a novel by William Golding called The Spire. I read this story forty years ago, and was struck by the illustration on the jacket showing a cutaway view of a cathedral spire with the protagonist Dean praying inside.

At about this time, my local bank discovered the mummified corpse of the building's original owner in the rafters of the roof space. The building dated from Tudor times, and no one knew it had been there for 400 years. It reminded me of the way that corpses of cats are sometimes found buried within the walls of old buildings, put there as an offering to a household deity. I pondered doing something similar with my plot, having my detective hero find a dried-out man in the steeple of his local church.

That's me being a pantser this morning, and thinking about William Golding I remembered that his first novel Lord of the Flies was rejected twenty times, with one publisher saying: 'an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.' I've just received my 53rd rejection letter from the 150 queries that I made in the first seven months of 2015. At least it was a personalised letter, rather than a form thanks-but-no-thanks reply. I've had only four personalised replies, and all were from small agencies, which only goes to prove that if an agency or publisher is huge then they don't have to be polite anymore.

All of this rejection is like water off a duck's back to me now, but all the same I had a look for examples of other writers who were turned away multiple times, finding this jaw-dropping site:

http://www.litrejections.com/best-sellers-initially-rejected/

It really does make you wonder if any literary agents and publishers know what they're doing. Imagine all of those best-selling books not getting the attention that they deserved from a reading public who plainly know better than the hand that feeds them.

It goes to prove that we should never give up. We could be one query away from success.

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Just because an agency passes up a book doesn't mean they think it won't sell. Obviously those books were huge successes. A lot of those times, they just weren't the right agent to sell it. Maybe they didn't have the right contacts to edit and promote a book like that.

Something interesting that just occurred to me: we see all these numbers of rejections that best sellers got, but how many of those rejections were because that author didn't do their research send to an agent that properly represented them? Just a thought. :)

I agree, though, that writers should never give up. Joseph Finder told me that the authors that make it big are not the best writers necessarily. They're the most stubborn.
 
Another possibility is that the agents made the right decision with the information that was available to them at the time; that is, information regarding the reading tastes of the general public, likely commercial viability of the book, etc. They aren't clairvoyant, they just have to make an informed guess as to what probably will sell and what probably won't. Maybe they don't get things 'wrong' any more than a weather forecaster is wrong when it rains after he says 'there is only a 10% chance of rain'. Because one time in ten, the 10% chance will come off. But will agents and publishers back the 1 in 10 runner, or the 1 in 2 runner? The answer is obvious...
 
Another possibility is that the agents made the right decision with the information that was available to them at the time; that is, information regarding the reading tastes of the general public, likely commercial viability of the book, etc. They aren't clairvoyant, they just have to make an informed guess as to what probably will sell and what probably won't. Maybe they don't get things 'wrong' any more than a weather forecaster is wrong when it rains after he says 'there is only a 10% chance of rain'. Because one time in ten, the 10% chance will come off. But will agents and publishers back the 1 in 10 runner, or the 1 in 2 runner? The answer is obvious...
Good point. Or what if the first iteration of the book they saw was not the same iteration the last agent saw? Maybe they did a lot more editing.
 
That's right. I've had some stories rejected >10 times. But I keep tweaking them after each rejection; the accumulation of tweaks sometimes result in the latest version being hugely different from the first version. So it would not be fair to say that the first editor was wrong to reject a story that later gets accepted when it is barely the same story any more.
 
This is a fractal template on everything. Job applications, investment proposals. Every industry has many rejections that need to be ploughed through.

I remember as an undergraduate applying to over 50 jobs and recording it all on a communication ledger (that's right @Nicole Wilson would be proud of how organised I was). And I only managed to get 4 interviews and 1 job offer. I got it just in time after I graduated so didn't have many weeks off from study to work (which might have been a bad move on hindsight).

It's no different here. Who knows how many gems are rejected and unsung heroes. But I think that the art of getting rejected - it's become an art for me already - allows us to tweak and improve each time...or it should do, I think. Personally I find it madness to continue blindly submitting after getting rejected without a slight improvement here or there to the query process at least not necessarily the book itself just the presentation. The book too if the feedback was relevant to it directly.
 
All of this rejection is like water off a duck's back to me now,
Yep, I'm quackers too! As for tweaking it after every rejection, that's a huge amount of tweaking, 50 plus times would drive you nuts. There's no way I'd put up with that, as I'd never get any writing actually done and I'd go nuts. 8 - 10 times is enough, and you can't please everyone.
 
I think even though when I start receiving rejections again I'll get used to it pretty quickly, I still hope to have my Bernard Black moments. I saw this clip today and forgot how much I loved the show! I think it's quite fitting to this thread, well, to all us querying writers in general haha!



I think that you might get rejections based on all sorts of reasons, but like others have said I'm sure it's a right agent, right time thing as much as anything.

Also, nailing that query, man... nailing that query! It's so hard. :confused: I've been sending my query to fellow Litopian folk (thank you i love you let's get married no i dont care that you're already married) and I'm hoping to have a bit more luck next time thanks to their input. :D
 
Doesn't this presuppose that the rejection letter says something about the MS submitted? The majority of rejections I've gotten were no rejection letter or standard rejection e-mail or letter, both of which are not helpful in anyway. Something simple would be more helpful. "Not Marketable" or "Too Long" or "MS doesn't work for me" are things that could be added to a database when rejections are processed automatically. It wouldn't take long to click on something in their systems to give some sort of a reason. By far, not even sending a rejection is worse. (Just my opinion)
 
All of this rejection is like water off a duck's back to me now

It's funny when you think about how tempered to rejection we get and how quickly that occurs. Earlier this year, I did a lot of short fiction writing and got a lot of rejections in a very short span of time (33 in the course of 3 months). On some levels, I think that's a good thing. While rejection can be very disheartening, becoming somewhat tempered to it can help you keep moving forward. It sucks, but pushing through it makes it that much easier to weather the next rejection and as some people have already said, many times it isn't that the work that's the problem, it's the representation.

I feel the same way...I don't think that my writing is bad...I just think I have to find the right person to champion the work that I produce. And as long as I can keep that kind of positive mindset, I'll be able to deal with rejection (that is until I crack and start setting up nightly riddles for vigilante detectives to solve).
 
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Help! Character development problem

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