I feel I must warn you, if your not a writer maybe this blog post is not for you. You may get something from what Im going to write but writers will appreciate it that much more.
Rejection is a writers burden to bear. We all suffer rejection in our lives. We can go to work and feel a certain amount of rejection each and every day. Only it's short lived and often we brush it off as wit or someone being funny at your expense. And I say, so what, I probably do it to others as much as others do it to me. Life goes on. Only as a writer I feel our rejection can go a little further.
In most professions of art there seems to be a tough road that we must follow. A road of loss and pain which all the greats have walked down. Some of the most famous being Vincent van Gogh and Goya and a more modern day star Amy Winehouse this is to name just a few of many. Now don't get me wrong I'm not alining myself up with the likes of the above, Just showing that great art seems to come from people that have had great pain. So rejection plays a part in creating the art, and my art is writing. I have lost much in my life. More than some and not as much as many. When I look round at my fellow man and woman I see people who don't see the world as I do, they move through their life with eyes closed and hear nothing of its beautiful sounds. When I receive a rejection letter from an agent or a publisher it hurts. If you say it didn't then you are fooling yourself and if that's how you cope with rejection, then fine fool away. Only it doesn't stop there, it took me over five years to write my first novel. And the one I'm on now I have been writing for over a year already. I work full time and have a young family so time is my enemy and I just don't have enough of it.
People can without knowing it reject us sensitive writer types simply by being nice. You know when you meet someone for the first time and tell them your a writer is goes something like this- You tell them your a writer, they think it's great and tell you how they have a good idea and begin to share it with you. Then you try to explain that good ideas are plentiful and its not the idea that makes a writer but the commitment. They look blanked at you and ask you what your book is about. You reply with a fumbled pitch that takes all credibility from you which leaves them thinking your a fraud. Now weeks go by and they will eventually ask how the book is going you say it's coming great and go it to a boring rant about the currant plot because you feel they are truly interested and not just being nice. Then when you notice there face you stop and it's many months before that person ask about your book. After a year( or maybe two) they ask again and are surprised when you still have the excitement you had before. But still you will manage to bore them and they will walk away thinking how can someone commite so much time into something that will amount to nothing. And that's the difference between a want to be writer and a writer. What we do is hard, each and every time someone asks how the book is it's a kind of small rejection in its self. (That's unless you answer is it's published! Here have a complimentary copy.) All they do is remind you how slow and bad you are, but and this is a but with a smile on my face. If you want to be good you have to go through all this rejection. It builds good writing. You will only find your style through writing many hundreds of thousands of words. Not till then will it be you and you will be good. So when the next person asks you how's the book coming, tell them it's coming on fine and thanks for asking. If they ask what's it about? And this is the hard part that I fail to do so often. Tell them sorry but you have decided to not tell anyone about the book until you have finished. Then talk about the weather or there new house or the next new smart phone. Then when they hear about your book its the first time and its complete. You are free to talk about all the characters and plot turns because they have read it.
ps, This advice is manly directed at me, I am a failure when it come to following these simple rules. But I will make the extra effort and not keep going on about my books that is until I have finished then i will not shut up. Please comment as Im always happy to receive them.
