Rejection and a Kick in the Face
If you read the title of this blog post and you expected me to spin a lengthy yarn about how my latest rejection was a kick to the face, then you’re actually wrong. That said, I think this post is still worth reading.
Yesterday I found out that a short story that I’d submitted to a fantasy magazine had been rejected. As with virtually all rejections, there was no associated list of reasons why the piece had been rejected. There are a couple things that writers typically feel when they get these letters that I want to write about:
First, don’t blame the publication. I know we’ve all heard stories about how ridiculously famous authors have had their books rejected and most of us have heard the stories about how, to see what would happen, people submitted a NY times bestseller to a publishing firm and it got rejected. Say what you will about the system or the man or whatever, but they’re just doing their jobs. The system isn’t there to coddle you, stroke your ego, or put you down humanely. It’s there to make money. Bottom line: if they don’t think your story/book/poetry/whatever will sell money, you get rejected. Writer self-help step #1: Accept this fact. It will never change.
Second: the Kick in the Face. If you have read this blog before, you may have seen this post I wrote previously about handling rejection like a true writer. I’m going to say something that a lot of the writing self-help books don’t say. When you get that rejection, you’re going to be pissed off. You’re going to be mad and you absolutely, positively will feel like giving up. Writers, when we get these rejection letters, will say and feel all kinds of crazy stuff ranging from “my writing sucks” to “nobody’s ever going to publish my stories” to the absolute worst of them all:
Why do I even bother writing if nobody’s going to publish my work?
This is where the kick to the face comes in. It’s perfectly fine to feel these things and you should feel them – let yourself go through the range of anger, sadness, and dejection that comes with that rejection letter. Then kick yourself in the face. Slap yourself out if it. Realize that all of that crap is just that, crap. You write because you’re a writer and if you do it long enough and hone your craft enough, you will eventually find some success. You may not get on the NY times bestseller list, but there will be small victories.
If you can’t slap yourself out of it, then get a friend to kick you in the face. Last night I was babbling on about how I was going to give up writing and I quit and life sucks and why should I bother yadda yadda yadda. A friend of mine slapped me in the face and told me to knock it off (you know who you are…thank you!). What I intend to do is write tonight… write until I can’t take it anymore.
What I failed to remember, and what we may need friends to kick into our thick heads (hard!), is that we write because that’s who we are. We write because we tell stories, and we gain some satisfaction from telling and honing a story. Publication is secondary to writing, and every writer gets rejected.
So I’m taking my own advice: sucking it up, getting back on the horse, and moving on from yet another rejection and realizing that friends who can slap you around a little bit after a rejection are probably more valuable than friends who can proofread your stuff before the rejection.
Making Your Dreams Come True
Before I get to the specifics of one of the dreams I’m making come true, I want to talk about dreams as they pertain to both writers and characters. As human beings, we all have dreams and aspirations. This is part of what makes us human. As writers, many of us have more dreams than we can count. Sure, we have dreams of becoming uber-famous published writers who can retire from our day jobs and live off the proceeds of our bestsellers.
But, we also have the kind of dreams that plague us throughout the day; dreams that comfort us like a warm blanket when we go to sleep at night, and dreams that keep our minds racing while we drive to work, while we eat a sandwich, and pretty much while we do anything. These dreams are literally the stuff of legend. These dreams are the scenes, dramas, and epics that are begging to be written and to be told from start to finish.
What’s interesting here is that there is no magic fairy dust, no faith, no religion, no lucky roll of the dice that will, on its own, make our dreams come true. The only thing standing between us and the realization of our dreams is work. That’s it. Putting one foot in front of the other, tapping one key after another. Certainly we could all use a little luck to help us along, but if we’re still sitting at home in front of a blank screen and 700 pages of unwritten manuscript remain jammed inside our head, no amount of luck will get our story published. What will get our story published, what will pull our dreams from out of reach and into the palm of our hands is nothing more than raw, hard work. Persistence and patience don’t hurt either.
A couple of years ago, I remember saying to myself that I’d never be published. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t good enough to be a published author and that my stuff sucked. My dream of being a real writer remained just that, a dream. Then I changed my dream of being a writer into a goal. I worked and I wrote. I wrote some more. Then I wrote some more. I now have over 14 computer programming books published and I’ve got a short story published in a real, actual, on-paper anthology.
Dreams are things we have that will never happen. Goals are real, tangible things we can put effort toward.
Another dream I’ve had since the day I got my driver’s license was to own a fun, sporty car. In the past I’ve just never had enough money saved up or I’ve needed to drive practical cars or minivans or whatever. As long as I kept that dream as a dream and convinced myself it would never happen, it never happened.
A couple of weeks ago, I walked into a BMW dealership and I special ordered a green BMW 328i xDrive and it will be put on a ship leaving Germany sometime next week. The combination of handling, sporty feel, comfort, reliability and style are unmatched by any of the other cars I test drove.
BMW 328xi in Tasman Green
Instead of pining over what I didn’t have, I visualized what I wanted. I pictured myself sitting behind the wheel of the car I wanted most in the world (within reason… no amount of positive visualization is going to give me enough money to buy a Bugati Veyron 
) and I worked toward that goal. It took a lot of scrimping, saving, penny-pinching and skipping on other big-ticket purchases I might’ve made, but I made it. My dream car arrives in a few weeks and I fully expect to be driving this vehicle when my first fantasy book is published. That’s not a dream, that’s my goal and it’s a goal that I work toward every day.
So, while I may not have advice that I can impart on the step-by-step process you need to follow in order to get published, I do know a little something about making stuff happen. Want to be a published writer? Take all that time you spending wishing and write. Take the rest of your spare time and write. Take the spare time you don’t have and make it spare and take writing classes and join a writing group. Get all the guides on how to get published and how to write query letters and hone your craft. Work. Put one foot in front of the other and tap one key after the other. Don’t sit around waiting for divine intervention because your own intervention is what’s going to set things in motion.
Nothing would please me more than to see a bunch of comments on the bottom of this blog post rattling off dream after dream that you folks made come true. Dreams aren’t mythical, intangible pink unicorns. They’re goals you can make happen.
While you’re at it, make sure your characters have dreams. At the very core of a good novel is a protagonist who has dreams and an antagonist that wants to thwart them. Use the feelings you have while trying to reach your goals to make your characters and their struggles to fulfill their dreams more realistic.
Just Do It
The two of you who still actually read this blog may be wondering why it’s been forever since I posted. Typically people tell you (you know, those “social media expert” people) that you should never apologize in your blog for an absence.
I’m not apologizing, my absence actually has relevance and meaning to the life of a writer. My life as of late has been very chaotic. I’ve had ups, downs, big ups, and big downs, all within an extremely short period of time up to and including considering a potential job change, considering moving, beginning divorce proceedings, and much, much more. Even though my divorce probably ranks at the top of the worlds most amicable divorces ever, its still a huge source of stress, anxiety, and most of all – change.
As I floated around on the top of the waves, nearly drowning from having swallowed so much stress I got to thinking about how long it had been since I actually sat down and wrote anything. I don’t mean having written anything good, profound, or meaningful. I mean, how long it had been since I’d written anything. I hadn’t blogged, hadn’t written in a journal, and certainly hadn’t been working on my fantasy novel.
So, I slapped myself in the face and said to myself:
One thing that writers must do is write. Thinking, plotting, scheming, dreaming – all useful but mean nothing without actually sitting down and writing.
If I’m not writing, I’m not a writer. That’s the short and long of it right here. So, I sat down and started writing. Since then, I’ve finished a short story that I’ve sent out for consideration by a popular fantasy magazine (will know in about 6 weeks if they liked it) and I’m nearly done with another short story that I’m submitting to an anthology. Once done with those, I’m going to dive back into the fantasy novel.
The point I want to make here is I hit rock bottom. I was wallowing in self-pity and I was coming up with every excuse in the book to stop writing. Since I’ve started writing again, I’m a happier person. The moral of the story is if you want to be a writer – the one thing you must do above all else is write. Its about time I followed my own advice.
My Impressions of the iPad
I realize that the iPad came out last month and, in blogging terms, that’s an eternity. However, I didn’t want to be one of those people who posted their review of the iPad after having only spent two hours with the device. I’ve been trying the use the iPad in my every day life for nearly a month now and I think I’ve finally aggregated all of my thoughts and feelings on the device to a point where I can blog about it.
First, the reason why many of you are probably reading this: the eReader experience. The iPad is the single best looking and feeling electronic book reading device I have ever encountered. This includes using PCs to read books, the Kindle (which I finally got to play with last month!), and the Nook. There’s a button on the device that lets you lock the screen orientation so you can read in single-page mode even while lying down on a couch, etc. The screen is positively brilliant and the page-turning experience is great too. The buying experience is seamless and even faster than the Kindle for downloads. I love how full-color book covers show up in a screen that literally looks like a bookshelf. My only complaint about the book reading experience is you need to avoid high-glare situations because unlike e-Ink, you have trouble seeing the iPad screen in high intensity sunlight.
The battery life on this device is insanely good. I have played high-resolution fast-paced driving games for hours, read books, read e-mails, taken notes in meetings, and watched Netflix movies and then forgot to charge the device for two days and still picked it up to find it at 40%. In fact, I’ve never even seen my iPad go below 20% and I am really, really bad about plugging it in at night.
Netflix. If you have an iPad, you absolutely, positively need a Netflix subscription. Being able to kick back and watch episodes of the A-Team on my incredibly bright 10″ screen with the headphones on – priceless.
Evernote. Evernote for the iPad is an incredible piece of software. I have actually started taking the iPad to my meetings at work. It’s roughly the same size and only a pinch heavier than the notebook I normally take to my meetings. I flip the case into “angled typing” mode, open a new note in Evernote and take notes during the meeting. By the time I get back to my desk, Evernote has already synchronized my note via the cloud and it’s sitting on my work desktop and will be available the next time I turn on my home PC or Mac.
Games and Education. I’ve discovered some educational games that I plan on having my daughter play. I picked up a Modern Warfare game that is ridiculous in the level of enjoyment and only has minor touch-related annoyances. I’ve got a racing game for the pad that is SO much fun because the added weight and size of the pad gives me far better accelerometer-based steering accuracy than phone-based driving games.
As I mentioned before, the new interface for reading and composing e-mails is outstanding. The book reading experience is incredible. I’ve actually integrated this device into my daily routine at work as well as at home and, having it by my side has actually caused me to turn on my laptop MUCH less in the last month. In fact, my small laptop has only been turned on twice, both of those times just to get to local files.
If you are considering getting an iPad, don’t listen to people who have only used it once or twice. It felt strange and awkward when I first got it. After two weeks, I was truly loving it. After four weeks, I absolutely, positively cannot live without this device. It is as much a part of my life now as eating and breathing. It is also the invaluable device for capturing writing ideas while on the go – far easier than doing it using the phone or a laptop.
The Story That Haunts You
A couple of nights ago, I’d just finished a fairly productive evening of writing. I’d finished about 2500 words that evening, and done over 3000 that afternoon so I had that light, unburdened feeling you get after being able to “vent” an entire scene onto paper (word doc). I was feeling great.
I got up from my desk, and got about halfway to the kitchen when it hit me. It wasn’t the typical “I just got an idea for how I want to work the next scene” idea – those are fairly subtle and I file them away in Evernote on my iPhone so I don’t lose them. This idea, however, appeared before me and bashed me in the face with a Louisville Slugger.
To set the stage here, I’ve finished the outlining (word doc, index cards, and a table full of sticky notes) for my fantasy novel. I’ve written Act I, and am about 30,000 words into the book as a whole. When I’ve had a chance to write, I’ve typically been able to nail a 3k+ scene during that session. I have committed to this novel and I’m in no way feeling frustrated with it and have no desire to give it up.
The idea that hit me is truly unique. I spent several days googling and searching book store keywords for anything that resembled what I wanted to do – nothing. This new idea is not fantasy, but set in current times and will probably have a faster pace. It is also part of a genre for which more agents accept queries, that prints more books, that has a vastly higher readership.
So the dilemma : This story is now haunting me. During the day, the time my brain normally spends thinking about my fantasy novel is now mostly consumed by this new idea. This idea is far more character-driven and doesn’t in any way resemble the “epic fantasy” of my current project.
I have been told many times that dropping a WIP in the middle to pick up another one is one thing that separates published writers from “aspiring” writers. That said, this idea is haunting me and I’m not sure how to get that out of my head.
So, if you’ve ever had this problem – you get knee deep into a WIP you love and an idea hits you in the face and won’t leave you alone – what do you do? What techniques have you tried for calming the second idea so you can finish the first or have you actually dropped the first to finish the second?
I would love to hear how other writers handle this situation.