The Progress of Rejection

The short version to spare those who have heard it before. I wrote a novel in my early 20s. I sent a single query to St. Martin's Ruth Cavin (a legend). She requested the full. She kept it six months. I got a personal rejection saying my novel was too much a psychological thriller and not enough of a real "mystery" (which was what she was buying). It was a lovely rejection. She tossed in a compliment or two. I wasn't horribly crushed. Nonetheless, I didn't submit anywhere else. I also didn't complete another novel for a decade.

I kept writing. My reasons for not writing another novel and for not submitting were more about loving writing for writing's sake and not being terribly driven to get the thing published. I got several poems published, a few short stories published in literry magazines. I liked writing poems and short stories. But I just, for whatever reason, never had an idea for a full-length novel for a long time. FInally, I did come up with what I thought was an idea that I could write 300 pages about--and one I thought might actually sell someday. I started it. Midway through, I got Shiny New Idea Syndrome. I wrote Spanish Disco in six months. It sold in a couple of months. I've sold, including those not out yet and in the pipeline, about 25 novels since.

But I still get rejected. I shoot out proposals that don't sell. I start books that I never finish because I lose interest . . . I have massive doubts and highs and lows. But I do admit my first sale was not one of those agaonizing "I had 99 rejections and the 100th submission sold" stories.

However, I have LOTS of writer friends. And I see every sort of personal journey on the way to a sale. And I definitely think there is a progression of rejection. I think you go from form rejections, to personal rejections. You go from bland "not right for my list at the time" to comments and "I'd be willing to look at this again." I think you start knowing you're getting closer when no one tells your agent, "This writer can't write" and instead says, "They're a great writer, but I just don't love the book." Tangible and very real reasons for rejection start occurring--very often having less to do with the book's flaws and MORE to do with personal taste on the part of agents or editors.

And then you come to a different place. I think you come to a place where you start to see it as a business decision. A passion decision. You start realizing you can, indeed, write, but your book will not be for everyone. I have a work in progress where the mother is so awful, so wretched a person . . . that I know there are editors and people who just will not be able to enjoy the book or appreciate it or feel passionate about it. It's a book that may make a reader wince in spots. I can't write the book any other way, and so I am okay with whatever the outcome is.

So do you see progress as a writer with also progress of rejection? Do you think they're related?