Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014
Staying at it
Publishing your work
Getting published
If you read all those rejections, this is a good time to take up the topic of writerly persistence. It’s more important than all the talent in the world.
In Chapter 23, I included a list of well-known books with the number of times they were rejected by editors and/or agent. How many “no” letters will you take before you call it a day? One? Ten? A hundred? It’s an important question to ask yourself.
Everyone has different resources to draw upon to persist and keep at it. For me, I’d say the two things that helped the most were growing up on a farm and playing football. In that agricultural environment, I had to perform work when I didn’t feel like it—if it was hot, tough, the garden needed weeding; if it was cold, tough, the stove required firewood. Later, when I played football, I happened to be on losing teams for several years. Almost every week, I’d go into the game knowing that even if I scored a couple touchdowns and made a bunch of tackles, my team wasn’t good enough to win the game. Given those circumstances, do you loaf, quit, or somehow make yourself give your best regardless? The last option is what I’m talking about here: persistence.
Don’t expect to be an overnight success in your writing because the chances are massively great that you won’t be—although it will be a nice surprise for you if you are! Know that you have to put in hours and hours of work into this project—hours when you could otherwise have been watching television, socializing with friends and family, building a business, pursuing another hobby, or—my favorite—sleeping.
Unless you’re lucky enough to be independently wealthy, you’ll be writing as well as performing your day job—certainly for your first book and probably for your others as well. Know, too, that your book won’t get written overnight. Even short stories take an investment of time. If you can accept all this happily (or at least, contentedly), it’s easier. Putting in all these hours and resenting it seems too high a price to pay. Why put yourself through that?
IDEAS AND INSPIRATION
In truth, you should be enjoying the process for its own sake—because you love to write. The time spent writing should seem like a gift, not a burden. If it feels like a chore, question why you’re doing it, and maybe consider calling it quits.
Having made these statements, even with the most formidable willpower in the world and the absolute certainty that writing is your life path, you still might have days you despair. At such times, you might take solace from the writers’ cliché that the difference between a bad writer and a good writers is the ability to work on a bad day.
So there’s one approach to the low times: acknowledging that there will be tough days and just accepting them. Having those days and feeling that you shouldn’t have them is too high a burden. They will happen and they will pass, and that’s all okay.
A positive attitude is one huge way in which you can put the odds of being published more on your side. Keep going when it seems impossible—both with writing your manuscript, and looking for agents/publishers—and you’re already ahead of the many, many people who give up too easily.
Don’t get me wrong. Not everybody’s going to make it, and a stubborn refusal to realize if that means you, isn’t doing you any favors. However, there’s a huge spectrum between giving up too early and giving up too late—and most people give up too early.
Make up your mind now that you’re not going to be one of those people, and your odds of success have just been dramatically boosted.
The least you need to know
· Researching publishers helps find the right home for your book.
· Cover letters can make or break your chance with an editor/publisher, so do them right.
· Rejection is inevitable and part of being a professional writer.
· Persistence is perhaps the most important ingredient for successful writers.