A Rejection A Day Keeps the Doctor Away? Or, How To Be Thick-Skinned.

I recently started sending my creative work out in earnest, mostly to literary magazines. My hope is to get a publication by the end of the year. Just one! It’s all that I ask of the lit mag gods. But alas, my inbox (and mailbox) has only been receiving rejection letters. They’re not all “bad,” but they’re all essentially saying the same thing: thanks but no thanks.

As an aside: You know you’re a writer when there’s such a thing as a “good” rejection letter. These usually include some personalized message about how much they liked the piece and it was a tough call and yadda yadda, but… it’s still a no. A softer letdown than some.

So, how am I doing, you ask? Spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, etc-ally? Surprisingly okay. In fact – call me naïve, call me crazy – but I’m actually excited about the rejection letters. They feel a bit like battle scars; I fought for these rejections. As I told my roommate recently: “At least it means we’re trying!” She was not convinced. The truth of the matter is that rejection is a basic element of this vocation. If we’re going to be strapped together on this long journey, rejection and I, then why not befriend the beast?

I recently came across this quote from the prolific and well-respected poet William Stafford:

"Now and then a sequence appeals to me for long enough to be teased into something like a poem, and when I feel sufficient conviction, I detach it from the accumulated leaves – my compost heap – and halfheartedly send it around to editors. I never feel sure that I have anything worthy, though I often feel affection for these products; and of all my writing only a very small portion goes forth into the world, and of that portion a large part never gets an editor's approval. I suppose at least nine out of ten pieces which I surmise to be poems find themselves coming home permanently to roost." Taken from Writing the Australian Crawl.

His words are a good reminder that every writer, no matter how great, experiences rejection. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter manuscript was rejected "loads" of times before a publisher took on the project. (I bet those rejecters regret that terribly now.) The sooner I can come to terms with that, the sooner I can move on and do my work. Because that’s all I can do.

Also, I’m realizing that rejection doesn’t hurt as bad when you are keeping busy – creating, revising, trading work with other writers, sending work out. The trick is not to let the grass grow beneath your feet. We can’t let our creative self get stale, waiting for someone to “accept” our work. The most important part is the creation of it in the first place. The rest – the readers – is icing on the cake.

I’m trying to use each rejection as a reminder that writing is revision. But more on that next time. Til then, keep chasing those literary dreams! 

Rumi on the prowl!

Author Spotlight: Barbara Shoup

Yesterday, I had the good fortune of listening to Barbara Shoup give a reading. She's a YA author promoting her latest book, Looking for Jack Kerouac.

She said she loved novel writing because it uses both sides of the brain. One side is the "What if?" or right side, and the other side is the "What do we do with it?" or left side brain. It's a constant balance between being in control and letting go of control. As a writer, you have to be open to new things. You have to let the story take its course instead of trying to force it to be something that it's not.

Shoup also spoke at length about something we talk about often in my writing workshops: what makes the reader keep reading? What is the yearning, the heartbreak, the crucial unanswerable question at the heart of this story? Without it, you cannot have a compelling story.

She said that the main way to incorporate this yearning into your story is to access it from deep within yourself. A writer must be willing to mine their own personal history and connect with a yearning they themselves know intimately. Even if the story has nothing to do with the writer's life, there must be something personally at stake for the writer.

Also, she reminded us that "nothing is lost."  As writers, it is our jobs to turn pain into something beautiful. We wrestle with words until we make the pain more bearable. I can speak from personal experience that it is those moments of intense emotion that have the longest legacy on the page.


Luckily for me, her talk focused on her process in writing this book, and in writing novels in general. She prefers to stay away from writing software and uses old-school methods like drawing charts and making calendars. She also explained how she builds a visual map of her story line using colors to track where there are flashbacks and when characters are in scene.  She even passed around her "Process Book," a log she keeps while writing full of factual information, character development, backstory, problems, revisions, and tasks. In order to write Looking for Jack Kerouac, she herself had to take a road trip down to St. Peter to collect "research." Another great reason to be a writer!

Listening to her talk about the process of writing a book was exciting and also daunting. "You can hold a short story in your hand," she said. "But you can't hold a novel in the same way. Sometimes, you get lost. And, to make matters worse, you're never the same person at the end as you were when you started writing the book." She says it takes her years to write a novel, and many - many - drafts. Each time you rewrite the story, you learn something new about the characters, about the yearning, about the possibilities for depth in this story. You start with the bones and you keep on layering.

Every writer has to figure out what works for them, and that takes time. It is my hope to use my summer to find out what my artist's way is... Check back for more updates as I blog about my writer's journey!

And thank you to Barbara Shoup for introducing me to this beautiful quote:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. –Ernest Hemingway

Readers are the Reason

This week was my first workshop in my Creative Nonfiction class. I turned in a draft of a piece that I am writing about my childhood home in Miami. I knew there were issues with it, and I was nervous handing it in, but I was so ready to have readers.

Having readers has been the missing link for me as a writer. It's why I started this blog, actually. It's also a big reason why I decided to join an MFA program (people - professors and peers - are forced to read your stuff!!). I've been writing for many years, but my words have mostly stayed on the pages of my notebooks or in Word documents. I've had a few things published around the internet (here and here and here) but nothing substantial. More on that later.

Anyway, back to my readers. In our workshops, after we turn in our 12 pages, our classmates have a week to sit with our story, read and re-read, and finally, compose a letter to us. The letter has three parts: first, they tell us what the story is about (very helpful to hear what others perceive your story to be about), then they tell us what we did really well (close observation, pacing, scene, etc), and lastly, they tell us where they were confused and what parts of the story weren't exactly working for them.

Getting "mail" this week from my eight lovely classmates felt like Christmas morning. But before getting the letters, the class spent about half an hour giving me feedback on my twelve pages. The writer getting the feedback isn't allowed to speak; we're only allowed to take notes furiously as people give suggestions, and blush profusely when we're given compliments. It's a magical half hour, and you leave with a burning desire to run to your writing desk immediately and get to work.

Our teacher has recently given us the analogy of the clothesline. A story is like a clothesline; it's a cord holding lots of different articles of clothing. Your clothesline has to be taut, because otherwise, your clothes will touch the ground and get dirty. And to make things even more interesting, your reader should never see the clothesline. It needs to be there, but it's invisible.

I have no problem writing scenes and reflections and moments - the clothes in this scenario. It's the stringing them up on the line that I have trouble with. My classmates recognized this, and helped me think about ways to tighten the clothesline. I know that I have a lot of work ahead of me before this piece is shiny and ready to go out into the world, but  it was very gratifying to have others see the potential in my writing.

Reading the letters after class, I was overjoyed to learn that several of my classmates had connected to my story.  Some of them even cried while reading, which is, weirdly enough, maybe the best compliment I've ever gotten as a writer.  

This is what it's all about!, I thought. This is why I write!

It's about sharing and it's about connecting. It's about finding that essence that lies within all of us and speaking to it. It's not easy, but I hope I get to try for a long, long time.

Last weekend, I went to Miami to get my family/friend fix. Here's a picture of me attempting to do homework at the beach.

 

Happy weekend!