Rejections and Other Annoyances

A friend of mine recently got back yet another manuscript she'd sent in to a publisher. It was returned with a rejection letter. Said letter was a full typed page long, so you know the editor took the time to read at least the first part of the book, and made helpful suggestions on what my friend could do to "fix" what she perceived as "wrong" with the book. Basically, she'd have to gut it and rewrite the whole thing.

I have to admit, editors completely baffle me. They keep telling us poor saps they want "fresh ideas, new voices"...yet they reject the very books that have these fresh ideas simply because they are different.

I really liked my friend's story. Yes, there were some plot points that needed fixing, some contrivances that were a little too convenient, but for the most part, the story was an interesting twist of a familiar plotline that's been used several times--with great sucess--in both books and movies.

If my friend were to do what the editor suggests, she'd be writing the same old story, with the same old characters. How dull and unimaginative is that?

A few other things that frustrate the life out of me, as a writer, are well-intentioned readers/critiquers who pick a character and say "that's not true to life". Well, whose life are we talking about? Yours? Mine? Or the character's?

I've actually had people tell me this with regard to a character who is based very closely on a real person. "Oh, a woman would never, never in a million years leave her three small children to run away with a wanted criminal!" Wanna bet? My grandmother did just that.

Or, "people just don't use phrases like that anymore." Oh, really??? Take the phrase "My Lands!" for example. If your character is a twenty-something waitress from Santa Monica, California, that particular phrase might not be part of her vocabulary. But what if she's a forty-something Southern girl who was raised as a strict Baptist?

Stephen King says that he had a stack of rejection letters as tall as a railroad spike before he got an offer for Carrie. THAT is determination. He never let an editor, an independent reader or other writers who thought they were being "helpful", distract him from doing what he wanted more than anything in the world--and that was to become a published author.

So for any of you hopefuls out there (like my friend--and ME) don't sweat the small stuff. And that's exactly what rejection letters are...small stuff. Just read it, thank the editor for his or her time, and move on. Keep writing. My writing teacher said last night that if she knew that she'd never be published again the rest of her life, she'd still write. She writes because she must. Because writing is as important to her physical well being as breathing.

Carpe pluma!