Rejection is not the End of the World

Being rejected is not the end of the world. In the moments after the initial blow it may seem like it. A person wants to crawl into the nearest hole, pull the cover rock over top, and stay there…forever. Instead of burying yourself in the hole, kick the rock aside. Go ahead, kick it hard. Then keep walking.

So the bombshell beauty at the bar shot you down. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe you don’t want that whirlwind catastrophe in your life. Maybe, it was a rejection that saved you a world of hurt that you would have never expected.

So the dream job that you thought you were made for rejected you without so much as an interview. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe there were organizational cultural differences that made you ‘not a good fit.’ Maybe their ways and means of doing business wouldn’t be in line with your core values after all. Shake it off and look for the next opportunity. Contrary to popular belief, opportunity knocks every day; you just have to be willing to answer the door.

If you want to be a writer or an author, rejection is part of the game, just like in life. I hold to the belief that every author that has ever lived has been rejected multiple times in their life. If you’ve never been rejected, then I tip my imaginary hat to you. (I don’t wear hats.)

The initial rejection from an agent or publisher feels like someone slammed you in the gut with their fist, and then did it again for good measure. You start questioning your ability, your imagination, your vocabulary, your prose, and perhaps even question your own identity.

Then you get angry. It isn’t your fault. They don’t know good writing when they read it. They have no clue of what they are missing. That’s right, you’re the next great American author and they missed out. Or, did they?

Honesty goes a long way when it comes to rejection. Some agents and publishers will at least give you some reason for the rejection. Sometimes that reason comes as a standard form letter. Here’s my take on the form letter rejection: The writing is of low quality. The end.  I would take that as a generous dose of politeness on the part of the agent or publisher. They could tell you exactly how they feel about the quality of writing, but choose not to, so as not to deflate your hopes and dreams of one day becoming better.

Agents and publishers aren’t the only sources of rejection. Reviewers can hit you in the gut with a loaded fist. Honest reviewers, and there are a lot of them, will tell it like it is, with or without your permission. If they don’t like what they read, they have a tendency to say exactly what was wrong with it, in their opinion. Reviewers differ from one to the other, but when that bad review goes to press, you better be prepared for it. Maybe they didn’t like your characters, or the whole thing was filled with clichés, or maybe the story just didn’t resonate or ring true with them. Are they wrong?

Instead of getting angry or upset, go back and look at the work from their perspective. Are the characters weak? Are there a lot of clichés in the story? Think, "It was a dark and stormy night…” Is the story believable? Or, is it accurate to its time? Historical accuracy is important to a lot of reviewers. Did you do your research? Grammar and punctuation are also important to reviewers. Editing anyone? Nobody is perfect and reviewers know this. But, there is a certain level of expectation.

The granddaddy of them all is the reader rejection. Readers can deliver a KO punch like no one else. Most readers today do not give reviews on the e-book sites. However, they give their reviews in the lunchrooms of schools and businesses across the world, or at the dinner table, at parties, to their friends and families. The word of mouth rejection eventually shows up in print somewhere. Maybe even in an email to the author, or on the author’s blog, or a social networking comment, but it will show up. Listen to what they are saying. They are your target market; they are your customers, your buyers, and most of all your crowd-source marketing team.

Author to author: We have a duty and an obligation to each other to call a spade a spade. When we beta read for each other, be honest. We need to tell each other when something is off, a plot hole exists, grammar and punctuation needs work, etc. Anything less is just back scratching.

What I want aspiring writers to take away from this post is this: I have been the subject of every one of these scenarios. However, the rejections that ensued were not against me as a person. They were about the poem, the short story, the novel. I could have thrown in the towel, walked away, and never thought on writing again. But, I didn’t. I took all the rejections, in the various forms, and learned from them. I learned to try my best to make sure grammar and punctuation were considered. I learned to show not tell (well for the most part anyway.) I learned to develop rich, believable characters, and not to use clichés.

In the next few weeks, I am again going to put myself out there for the rejections that might happen. No, the rejections that will happen. There will be agents, publishers, reviewers, readers and other authors who will not like what I have created. That does not mean they don’t like me. It means they don’t like the story. Not everyone is going to like it.

When the time comes for you to put yourself out there, just do it. See what happens, and learn from it. I guarantee you will be rejected, and sometimes that’s a good thing.

Monday Musings: Authoring with Integrity

There is a lot of temptation in the writing world. There are the big ones like plagerism and copyright infringement, but what about the smaller ones? It really equates to the 'little white lie' scenario.

Being an author is more than just a hobby for most of us. It is a profession, or the quest to achieve the accomplishment of the profession. Some of us are great writers, some of us are still honing the skills, but one thing we must always do, whichever side of the gray area we live, is maintain our integrity.

I am probably not going to make very many friends, and may even lose a few, by today's post, but I was raised to call a spade a spade, without beating around the bush about it.

Publishing is a cut-throat business. It is full of the 'wine, dine and sell sunshine' avenues of marketing, but every authentic agent and publisher knows where to draw the line. Like independent authors, publishers and agents are in the game to make money too. They learned, along the way of their journeys, exactly where to draw the line, and generally adhere to their professional code of conduct. Every publishing house in the world has a code of ethics, or moral standard, which defines the integrity of the business. Every publishing house that has ever crossed the line, or will cross the line, has, or will, eventually find themselves in the not so great view of the public eye, from authors and agents, to readers. They already know it is just not good business practice to operate without integrity.

As the rise of the independent author continues to climb, so does the public discontent with the marketing tactics of some authors and author groups. I have noticed another growing trend: authors, great and small, are also becoming discontent with these same marketing tactics. Why? Independent authors are all lumped into the same group; identified identically, across the board, by the reading public.

Examples of the source of discontent:

Review Manipulation still tops the list. When you manipulate the reviews on sites, such as Amazon, it really equates to fraudulent practices. It is one thing when friends and family are excited for an author and 5 stars every piece of prose they put out there, but it is quite another when an author actively seeks out 5 star reviews for their works, offering to return the favor to any other author who is willing to accept. Readers are becoming wary of books that have hordes of 5 star reviews, and for good reason. No one likes to be defrauded into buying something that is less than the advertised quality. Review manipulation, although a stellar form of increasing sales, is just bad business ethics.

The Author Attack is something that seems to be increasing in frequency on sites with reviews from readers. Using intimidation, or bullying tactics, against any reader who dares not like an author's work is not only bad business, but also shows a complete lack of professionalism on the author's part. Rallying the troops to support, and further the attack, is as low as an author can sink in the writing world. Not to mention the best way to drive away an author's reader base in droves. Criticism and rejection are the core downfalls of writing. An author needs to take the bad with the good; most often there is more criticism and rejection than there will ever be praise and adoration.

The Paid Review is becoming popular among authors, which is leading to reviewer abuse. Good reviewers are honest in their endeavor to lead readers to the best works. Sometimes reviewers just do not like what they read. An author has to ask themselves, "Why am I paying this person to review my book? For the honesty, or for an assurance of a good public review?" There are reviewers who will withhold from publishing bad reviews at the author request; but I have read comments from many reviewers who are becoming more jaded by the insistence on the author's part of only a good review. This places the reviewer in the difficult position of having to tell the author they operate with a code of ethics, and they will not compromise the trust they have built with their own followers.

Integrity is a core value in businesses across many industries. In most cases, it is THE most important value in a corporate culture. In publishing it is THE most important value in the industry. An author without integrity will soon find themselves an author without a readership. Avid readers are finicky, picky, unyeilding and relentless in their quest for a good story. When an author consistently exhibits signs of lacking integrity in their marketing tactics, the readers will catch on, and abandon them post-haste; most often without an explanation.

For some authors, it is about the money. That is self-evident in the publishing world today. For some authors it is about the money and the passion. For some authors it is strictly about the passion. Readers are about the passion for reading. When a passionate author makes the connection with passionate readers, the money becomes a by-product of the relationship.

Character Assassination

Character assassination - a topic nobody likes to talk about, but a very necessary act sometimes. Those of us who write novels oftentimes find ourselves in the awkward position of playing the role of an assassin.

No matter in what person we choose to write, we, as the author, have the omnipotent knowledge of everything that has happened in the past, is happening in the present, and will happen in the future. There are characters that live in our stories that we dearly love and then there are those who are integral pieces of the story, yet they are only destined to one end; an assassination orchestrated by their creator. 

This is the difference between human beings and diety when it comes to creation. Mercy for a fictional character is not relevant when it comes to the end of the story. We are willing to 'off' our characters at a whim, just because we want to; or sometimes it's a case of needing to for furtherment of the story.

I, as a reader, have found myself deeply disturbed or even horrified at the author assassination of some characters in the books that I have read.  Somehow, I will have developed a relationship of connection with each character in a story and find myself emotionally affected by the death of a one of these characters. This happened while reading one of Marion Zimmer Bradley's books in "The Mists of Avalon" series. I won't say which book because I don't believe in spoilers.

As I continue to write "The Malakai Chronicles", I keep in mind the reader's connection to characters and I am being very conscious of how eliminating any one of them may affect a reader. The characters in "The Malakai Chronicles" are rich with a lot of thought in their creation.

Are we Gods / Goddesses in our title of author? No, not really. We are creating ficitional stories; a reality that only exists in the imagination of the reader. How we respect the readers' emotional connection to their own imagination is the real test of character assassination.

I am excited and looking forward to summer of 2011 when "The Malakai Chronicles" is scheduled for public release.

The Realism of Characters

I am the analytical reader and writer. Everything I read is thoroughly analyzed for realism. With that said, it should be a given that everything I write is also analyzed for realism.

I'm often questioned by young people, who are also aspiring to be authors, why can't characters just be whatever you want them to be or do whatever you want them to. The answer is quite simple - if the character is not believable then the story is not believable. If the story is not believable it will not sell. Today, although many readers are reading for escapism, they still require a certain degree of realism in order to be able to relate to the characters and the events that occur in the story.

My first finished full-length novel, "Sticks and Bones" is written with a stark dose of realism to drive home a point to young people. I won't give a story spoiler here, but in order to write for young people they need to be able to see themselves in the story. Not always as they are in their own real life, but even as they might be in a fantasy story. "Sticks and Bones", a mystery crime thriller for young adults, required a certain amount of realism regarding high school students of today and why they do what they do in order to spark the interest of young people.

It was a fascinating adventure spanning four years immersed in the world of high school students of today so that I could demonstrate that realism in the book. This, in itself, is a testament to why characters can't just be what you want them to be. In this particular case they had to be as real as the reader and the friends of the reader. The characters of the book and their worlds are easily identified in the lives of the readers. A young adult will be able to say, "That sounds just like so-and-so," a person well-known to themselves. At the same time, I had to create adult characters that were just as realistic as the high school students of the story. If I had not created these realistic characters neither adults or young adults would understand the crime and why it occured thus diminishing the point of the book.

"Sticks and Bones" has yet to be published, however, I am hopeful that it will be picked up by a traditional publishing house and disseminated across the world. As arrogant as it might sound, I feel that the message carried in this book will send it soaring to the top of the readers lists all around the world.

The novel I am currently working on, "The Ten Thousand Hands Project" will astound even the most critical or skeptical reader. It is a work of fiction that has a very real place in the world in which we live. It will cause readers the world over to take pause and question what they honestly believe to be true in the world and what they don't. Why? Because of the realistic nature of the characters. Building characters is difficult. Characters require knowing everything about them - what they like or don't like and why they do or don't like those things; what are their physical attributes as well as their psychological attributes and how do each of these connect with the world in which they live - a world that must be created by the author with just as much realism as the characters themselves.

"The Ten Thousand Hands Project" is the prequel to the series, "The Malakai Chronicles". There are fantasy books, books on the occult, books based on religious history - but there are few books out there that touch the subject matter in "The Ten Thousand Hands Project" or "The Malakai Chronicles". I am hopeful for publication with this series as well and know that it will take the reader world by storm.