Share your rejections

Today on Twitter the hashtag Share your rejections was trending. I set out to write one tweet and wrote this instead. 

My first query rejection was very kind and positive. I still cried, but it was the best rejection anyone could hope for. 

The rejection that sticks out to me was one that I’m just getting over, when my freelance editor told me the book was going nowhere. That may sound harsh, it did to me. I cried. I screamed. I wanted to go drink but the restaurant my family took me to was in a dry town. I was inconsolable. I never responded to the editor. After paying hundreds and working with her on 3 rounds of edits this felt like a betrayal. 

Her exact words were that it was “charming but not compelling” and that I was too close to really tear into it and make it what it needed to be. I was so mad. What did she mean “tear into it?” It didn’t need tearing. It needed line edits and proofreading. The story was fine. 

3 years later I can tell you something I’ve never even said to myself. She was right. The story was cute. It was “charming”. Paying 2 other editors got it as polished as it could possibly be and I still got 14 rejections. The manuscript was technically sound, but the story wasn’t. What I didn’t want to admit then, and still struggle with now is that I’d spent over a decade on a story that no one would ever read. It’s a puff piece that represents my growth as a person and writer. I think the editor said it perfectly (though I sadly never told her) “This book has been a great exercise for you to learn about storytelling and hone your writing. But I very firmly believe that you are too close to this story, too scared to really and truly tear it up in the way that it needs to be torn to go from charming to compelling.” Her recommendation was that I write something else. I spent the next two years ignoring that and polishing what will always be my favorite and most painful writing exercise and or the last year I’ve struggled to truly commit to my new book. I think part of me still wants to hold out hope that she was wrong. But I know, deep down, that she was absolutely right. 

I started that book at 18. I’d never left home. Hell, I’d never had a boyfriend Over the next 10 years I moved to college. Got engaged. Broke off an engagement. Moved back home. Changed majors. Changed religions. I’d say I’d been essentially 4 people while writing a single novel. The main character, as most of the time happens, was a representation of myself. But as time progressed and I changed, so did she. And while the shifts in my life happened gradually the book became disjointed and odd. My character’s growth made no sense except to me. 

I could fix this book if I really tried. It would take some serious triage and there would be few survivors. A lot of darlings would need to be brutally killed. But in the end I think the editor was right. This was a learning experience. An exercise I needed to grow as a writer. Maybe now that I’ve said all this I can finally close that chapter and commit to a new project whole heartily. 

I kind of wish I could thank that editor for her honesty. It only took me three years to accept it.