A behind the scenes post that day you know you’re done with your writing group, querying literary agents, dealing with a tsunami of rejection, and a bonus teaching on cueing the reader
You cannot analyze while you create.
I’m not sure who said this originally (an internet search netted nothing), but I heard it from one of my mentors around the time I sent my first book out in search of literary representation. It means that the mind-set you use to get the story on the page and refine isn’t the same as the mind-set you’ll need when selling it. One requires tremendous openness and vulnerability. The other, street savvy and toughness.
The day I knew it was time to stop creating and devote myself—full time—to the analysis of marketing was when sitting at Tom’s table in late November 1998.
With neoned religious icons and sculptures of molten globules hanging from the walls, there we were tucking in for another Dangerous Writers class. Before us, the table was strewn with penis topped letter openers, mini-statues of St. Francis, and dishes of Nag Champa sticks lit and spiraling smoke. Tom, at the head of the table in a crisp white shirt with the collar buttoned to the top, ticked off our names on a list and asked for the number of pages each reader had brought.
“Four.”
“Seven.”
“Eight.”
Setting his pencil aside, Tom started in on his weekly update about his personal writing progress and observations on the business. On this day, he was distressed about his literary agent who wasn’t showing up.
Or giving good advice.
Or making him enough of a priority.
To be honest I wasn’t paying close attention (my first clue it might be time to leave) and even poo-pooed his complaints (my second clue). I let this go a step further and judgmental thoughts grew like weeds: Why bitch? You’re a fricken’ NYT bestseller!!
Tom, poor Tom, said something like, “We have to accept that we create for the pure pleasure of creation. We need to be satisfied with the art in the end.”
I’m paraphrasing here, so don’t hold me to a direct quote, but basically he said what I now say all the time in my classes which is that publishing is not Nirvana. Happiness, true and lasting happiness, exists in the moment to include the “moment” of creation.
But at the time, I wasn’t into advanced philosophy. I was a neurotic mess who believed the endurance of my marriage, my sense of self worth, and my future depended on getting an agent and a book deal. I could not, would not, fail.
Around the table, many of the writers nodded in agreement with Tom. But I slapped the table so hard a bobble nun hopped on her spring and then toppled over.
“No!” I said. “I disagree. I am not putting myself through this hell to be ‘satisfied’ with the creation. I want to connect. I want to be read.”
The bobble nun rolled side to side face down into the Batik print tablecloth* and went still. A supernatural silence overtook the room while Tom and his devoted followers looked at me, first with shock and then with loathing.
Strategically this was seriously stupid. These people were my base and could help me down the line with promotion and advocacy. In that one outburst, I would lose that base (other than from Rodger and those in the Remedial Writers group). Tom and a few others would make me pay dearly for my outburst, as you’ll soon learn, but I couldn’t stop myself. I had been insulted for my gender, my skin color, and my entitlement and I had never, not once, spoken up for myself. In one moment of passionate fury, it all exploded out of me.
And who was I to speak up anyway? I mean, it was Tom’s class, his show, his rules and I suppose I had no right. But in looking back and trying to get a bead on that woman of so many years ago, I see an injured soul seeking validation from the wrong people and the wrong achievements. I was hot tempered, irrational, passionate, verbose, and scared out of my wits. And I suppose part of me worried that Tom was right, that I was an entitled white woman who deserved nothing, not even to be read. Be content where you stand, right now, I heard him say. Be content being nothing.
Right or wrong, good or bad, I had my final clue.
It was time to go.
What followed were some brutal weeks of rejection. The first agent to tell me, “No thanks,” was Molly Friedrich, who represented Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. She wrote, “Thanks to Frank, memoir is basically dead. But good luck.”
Then came one from an agent named Richard Pine who wrote, “No one cares about you unless you are famous. You’re not. Give it up.”
Again and again, the same basic message:
“No, thank you.”
“Not at this time.”
“No.”
I could have rolled up in a ball and cried like a little girl, but I did not. That vulnerable writer who feared she was a pile-of-nothing had been shoved on the high shelf and the survivor who had endured—pile of nothing or no—was in the room. It was time to fight! 🤺
I took each rejection and tacked it on the wall of my office. A collage of NO. Then I sat in my chair and looked at those letters until they weren’t rejections by high powered agents anymore but rather simple sheets of paper with a few words typed in black ink. Then I opened Publisher’s Marketplace and started again. I made a new list of agents, wrote new queries, and stuffed new envelopes.
(Go directly to the next post on the Blackbird journey now).
Dealing with Rejection
It is inevitable that you will face rejection in your time as a writer, especially if you pursue publication. People won’t get you or your writing. They will criticize or ask questions that perplex and hurt the heart. They will say no, and no thanks, and good luck. They will say you are irrelevant, too. That’s the game, baby! That’s how it’s played. No true hero becomes heroic by skipping to the top. Think of Odysseus or Hercules or Cora in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (an amazing book that goes the distance with the Quest plot, BTW). You are on a heroic quest so be on the quest and get the job done. No isn’t no. No is, “Are you sure you want this badly enough? Well, prove it.”
Think of it as a necessary part of your personal heroic journey and rejection will not get you down (or not for long, anyway). Rejection is an opportunity to tweak your presentation, your message, your overview, and even the work. Look more closely at what you are being told in those rejection letters, read between the lines, and find a way, in your next submission to another agent, to refute those claims.
For example:
Dear So and So Agent:
You might think memoir is dead in the current market place, or that a writer needs be famous to get attention, but my book Blackbird refutes both of these notions because it is told via the technique of classic storytelling found in literature, which makes my work timeless and memorable in the great tradition of writers like Tobias Wolff and…
You see what I just did there? I used what the other agents said and led with it. No, it isn’t amazing, but it’s an example of a basic sales technique which is anticipating and overcoming objections. Thanks to my wall of rejections, I knew exactly what those objections were and they became ammunition for my next attack.
Another story I want to share is about a terrific writer, published well now, named Leif Enger. He submitted an early draft of Peace Like a River to Paul Cirone (who was an assistant at the time at Aaron Priest Lit). Cirone liked the book but didn’t LOVE it and promptly wrote up a rejection. I’m not sure if there was a back and forth between the two where Enger asked for additional feedback, saying he wanted to grow as a writer, or if Cirone wrote a longer rejection letter with specific thoughts on why the book didn’t work, but Enger rewrote his book based on Cirone’s rejection letter, re-submitted to Aaron Priest, and that was the end of that. They signed on the book. And Enger went on to be well-published. Plus his writing is killer. Love Leif Enger
That’s heroic. Enger turned a no into a yes because…that’s how it works. This process can be and should be empowering.
My copy-editor, Cevia, who graciously and intelligently helps with these posts calls it “productive struggle” which means you have to push a little, shove a little, learn a little, and it can’t always be easy otherwise you will not grow. This is how nature works. You cannot help a butterfly out of its cocoon because if you do, it will die. A butterfly needs to flap hard to get enough blood to the tips of its wings so it can break out of the chrysalis, emerge into the world, and fly! And it’s the same with us.
Think of your submission time, when putting out small works to contests or online or in journals and even when going for a big time NY agent, as a learning time and things will go easier. And remember, you only fail when you give up.
More on the struggle in my next post, that is unless I have some writing to critique. 😉
~ Jennifer, 🍎
A note on that asterisk a few graphs back (*)…
Remember when I wrote about cueing the reader? Hand-to-heart, I wouldn’t know if that table cloth was a Batik print or a lacy hand-me-down. I know there was a tablecloth. I think it was dark-ish.
And did the bobble nun topple over? Roll? ‘
For that matter, did Tom wear a white shirt or a denim one that day?
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.
But, as a writer I must make specific decisions and let objects mirror mood and intention. If I don’t, the scene becomes expositional who-ha that pauses the action. That will not do! So, I take “creative liberty.”
Did I explode in class? YES!
Did everyone look at me, aghast? YES.
But those tiny other details, those bits of the world that nudge a moment into sensuality? Again, I cannot be sure. Maybe. Maybe not. I cannot be sure. And that’s being a memoir writer, my dears. That’s the line we walk.
Thank you for this! You're so right to say a negative cn be turned into a positive... but to answer the question: I think it's yes. It always hurts. It's what you do with that just which matters...