The Sting of Rejection

Every time I get a rejection, I think about what it means to grow a thick skin.  That’s what common wisdom says – if you want to be a writer, you have to grow a thick skin. I’ve been writing stories for a long time, and went through the submission process with my trunked novel.  So I’ve endured a lot of rejection.  Have I grown a thick skin?

I’d be lying if I said rejection doesn’t hurt me anymore.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes I get a rejection, shrug, and send it out to the next publication.  And then there are the times I get my hopes up.  At these times, rejection hits like a punch to the stomach.  I spend about five to ten minutes wallowing, lamenting my future failures, convinced I’ll never be good enough.  My cat slinks off in disgust, my dog tries to lick my face, and my husband is left bemused.

So maybe my skin isn’t as thick as it should be.

But after I’m done being ridiculous, I come back to the rejection, to the piece, and try to figure out where I went wrong.

I suppose, in conclusion, I don’t think it’s necessary for a writer to have a thick skin.  It probably helps.  I always feel better when I can shrug off a rejection rather than going the wallowing route. Still, I’m not going to stop dreaming just because it stings less when these dreams aren’t realized.  I think what’s really important is picking yourself up after a rejection, dusting yourself off, and getting enough distance to re-examine things with an objective eye.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, keep the rejections coming!

Aerin and Danae, in progress 2

Still working on this when I can find the time.  Have to deepen some of the shadows on her face, and I'm not happy with the lumpiness of the mountains on the far right or the tree-line.  Will have to fix it.  But the twins are shaping up to look pretty much how I imagined them.  I should probably do a painting of Leith and Edan as well - half-brothers and the other side of this equation.  Leith is the elder of the two brothers, "fair as a field of marigolds".  Edan is dark and the by-product of his father's adulterous relationship.

Though their backgrounds are complex, their dynamic is relatively simple.  Aerin and Danae have the more nuanced relationship.  Throw the four of them together, and this is where the story begins.

Becoming Familiar with Your Genre

I went to the San Francisco Writers’ Conference this past weekend and had a great time.  Picked up some new useful tips, met some other writers, and got an invite to send the first three chapters of my book to an agent on my wish-list when it’s ready.  So I am super stoked!  I ran into a guy there, fairly young, who had written a fantasy novel.  I think just finishing a manuscript from beginning to end is deserving of praise.  But what threw me off is though he’d written a fantasy novel, he’d never read one.

 My head exploded a little.  Is it possible to write a good genre book without reading the genre?  I’m sure it is.  Is it probable?  Not really.

 Without reading the genre you’re writing, how do you even know if your book fits there on the shelf?  You don’t know what people are buying, or what things have been done before – to death (*cough* vampires *cough*).  Yes, you can have a fresh new take, but how do you even know if your take is fresh if you haven’t read its precursors?

 Usually people do this the other way around – they read a genre they enjoy and then decide to have their own go at it.

 So here’s a suggestion, one that’s worked well for me.  Read a lot of books in the genre you’re writing in.  Take notes on the things you really liked and things that you didn’t think worked.  When you go to write your own novel, you’ll have a list of things that you may want to include in your own book, and things you want to avoid.

Here’s a snippet of my notes from Brent Weeks’ Night Angel Trilogy:

-Legendary characters that other characters hear about then actually pop up in person later -Keep making situations worse and worse – how is the character going to get out of this?  Then think of a way to get the character out. -Bargains made earlier that come back to haunt -Rising sense of dread that the characters can’t pin down, then follow-up with the reveal