Rejection! Soul-crushing, image-destroying public humiliation, concentrated in the form of a standardized one-page piece of paper stating “does not currently fit our needs”! The dreaded rejection letter for a literary query. And it wasn’t even signed by a human being!
Your newest and greatest offering, Cyrano Gets a Nose Job, has been spurned by the publishing industry. After years of writing, months of editing, and weeks of meticulous clean-up, you set aside the writer’s craft to try to determine how to notify the world about this momentous literary triumph.
So you learned about publishing houses, literary agents, and submission queries, starting a second career as a book marketer. You finally sent out a half-dozen carefully crafted e-mails to unknown agents, turning yourself into the ultimate tele-marketer, and checked your in-box daily, waiting for a response. And now after 6 weeks of agonizing patience, this!
Wish I could offer some words of comfort and reassurance. But these are the hard realities of the publishing world. You’re going to get a lot more rejection letters than acceptance, regardless of how good you are. I mean, a LOT more. And there is no guarantee that all of this hard work in promoting your books is going to pay off in the end. Fact is, it probably won’t.
Folks, if you are writing with the intent of getting rich and famous, you are almost certainly doomed to disappointment. The literary world is flooded with manuscripts. I’m talking biblical Noah-and-the-Ark flooded. Some of these works are excellent, some mediocre, and a lot, well, are works in progress, but every one is being pushed by a hopeful author struggling to distinguish themselves from that seething mass of scribblers.
So, does that mean you should forsake your dream, archive those twenty beautiful chapters, and bury Cyrano until some grandchild stumbles across it in 50 years? No. Because those are twenty beautiful chapters, and Cyrano’s nose is a great story. You just have to recognize who your audience is.
The first target is your greatest fan: you. The best advice I ever got in regard to writing was: get yours up front. Get your compensation by the act of writing, by the pleasure in creation. Because it’s likely to be the only compensation you get. So, the first and most crucial objective is to please yourself. Write something that never fails to bring a smile to your face and even tears to your eyes, words that have the ability to reach inside and touch your emotions, stir your dreams and your aspirations. Be your own favorite author.
The second target audience is friends and family. Yes, it can easily feel like an intrusion to ask somebody who can’t refuse to read your work, but if they love you, they won’t just be willing, they will also be honestly interested. These are the people most like you, who share a common background, common values, and perhaps even common dreams. If you got the words right, if the writing has a chance to reach out to others beyond yourself, these are the people it should touch. And while not all are going to be delighted with your work, there are going to be at least a few who are going to enjoy your stories and your style, who can see you behind the writing, and who are going to look forward to seeing your progress as an author.
That, of course, leads to the third audience: the rest of the world. The literary agent, the publishing editor, the book critic, and finally, the person peering at a long list of novels, looking for a rollicking good story. If you can reach that third group, fantastic! But never forget the importance of those first two.
So, see those rejection letters for what they are. Not a rejection from your first and most important audience: you. Not a rejection by the second critical audience of friends and family. But simply a response from some unknown, overworked reader working through an endless slush pile who might not have had their first cup of coffee when they picked up your query.
Keep trying, keep hoping, and most of all, keep writing.
PS: My newest book, Pharaoh’s Mountain, is free on Amazon until Dec. 10th! Get it here.
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