Tenacity
Aka, keeping on going
This week’s topic isn’t personal per se. I’m not dealing with any specific rejection of set back. But I did do a couple of bookish events this week, for Essex Book Festival and a lovely book club at Roehampton Library. In both sessions I got asked questions around the topic of tenacity, keeping going, getting over the rejections. Probably also prompted by the fact that I haven’t been shy about telling everyone how difficult my latest novel, The House of Fallen Sisters, was to write!
In addition to this, a few authors have been posting this week about their own writing trials, including Susan Stokes-Chapman sharing rejection emails from her first (unpublished) novel and Anna Bailey talking about the particular pain of shelving a novel at an advanced stage.
Is it helpful to talk about these things? I think it is. As an aspiring writer, facing the query trenches for the first time, it helped to put my situation into perspective. No one wants to think about months and years of work going nowhere. But that is the truth of writing. So many scrapped drafts and chapters. Entire novels that, if you’re lucky, only a few people will read all the way through. How depressing! But on the flipside is the unparalleled joy of having a short story accepted for publication, signing with a literary agent who loves your work, meeting with an editorial team who’ve put together a whole powerpoint on why you should pick them to publish your novel. Okay, some days it feels like a thankless slog, but knowing that you’re not alone is a huge help.
They say that the only difference between a published writer and an unpublished writer is not giving up. To an extent that’s true. But you also have to be willing to accept criticism. The honest truth is that not everyone wants to. Your creative work is your own to a certain extent, but if you want it to be in the public domain then you have to think about… the public. Traditional publishing is a business, whether you’re considering one of the behemoths like Hachette or Harper Collins, or a small indie publisher. One of the hardest types of rejection to receive can be from the editor or literary agent who loves your novel but can’t see a place for it in the market. Spreadsheets and financial analysis is involved in every acquisition meeting. These rejections don’t mean that you can’t write, they just mean that the people who make the decisions don’t think that enough of the public will be grabbed by the premise.
So how do you know when to shelve a writing project? It completely depends on your aspirations. I have my own first novel in a drawer which I put there after around 50 rejections from literary agents. I gave up on that novel but it was a catalyst for writing my eventual debut, This Lovely City. My current agent was one of those ‘love it but can’t see a market for it’ rejections for the first novel. Thanks to that feedback, which included advice on the sorts of novels that were marketable, I knew to target my next novel at a story that I believed in and loved, but that should also be attractive to agents and publishers. However, plenty of writers have a particular story that’s important to them no matter the sales. For those writers the best option might therefore be to look at self-publishing, perhaps having copies printed for friends and family if it’s something personal or based around a family history.
Ah, writing. So much fun! Like all the creative industries, it’s subjective, frustrating but can also be incredibly rewarding (though probably not financially - sorry!). My best piece of advice is to try and find trusted readers who’ll give some honest critique of the work. After that, it’s up to you whether to listen or not!