Sucking it Up

[Dana King]

It must be the February blahs. Blogs all over the sphere are springing up with the periodic lament of a writer’s plight. Rejections, how meager our rewards are in relation to the quantity of our souls left on each page. It gets old, navel-gazing raised to the level of whining. Let’s refine the argument.

The question is: Why do you (personally) write? If you write solely for the joy of putting stories on paper, then you're already successful; have a ball.

If you write to get published, suck it up. There are more writers than publishing venues; it’s not going to change. I was an orchestral musician in a previous life before I turned my attention to writing. It's a lot less discouraging to get a rejection in the mail you paid 41 cents for than it is to fly across the country and book a night or two of hotel at mid-week prices so you can play a five-minute audition in competition with 150 others who are vying for the same spot, for a job that may not pay enough to live on. Send your story off and forget about it while you work on the next. It’s not such a bad deal.

If you're writing to make a living from it and aren't, then quit. The “I couldn’t live if I didn’t write” argument doesn't apply to someone who does it for the money.

I can name several good writers of personal acquaintance who might be published now if they spent half the time refining their writing they currently spend bitching about how tough the market is. I have had several short stories published, but publishers have so far managed to pass on all novel submissions, though they claim it pains them to do so. So it goes. (Sorry, Kurt.) The only way I see to keep moving forward is to accept each series of rejections with a simple phrase: The book wasn’t good enough. Make it – or the next one – better. That’s all I can control, so that’s what I deal with. To do otherwise makes it too easy to confuse reasons with excuses.

[Lynette Rees]

You are so right, Dana. I look on rejections as stepping stones to making my work even better. If some of my earlier work had been accepted then I'd never have grown as a writer. Eventually, I even got an article published on that particular subject!

In the writing world there's too much whinging and whining and not enough writing and submitting going on.

[Dana King]

Thanks, John and Barbara. I wondered if I was going to get roasted for that comment. It's nice to see others I respect here agree with me. And I agree completely with John's addition: make it better for you. The one item of satisfaction you can control is whether you enjoy your writing. Frankly, if you don't, who else will? I have a couple of friends who write in a genre they don't read. How can anyone be successful, on any level, like that?

[Barbara Fister]

What a refreshingly sane attitude! you rock, Dana..

The thing that amazes me is that unhappiness with the business never seems to go away. Successful writers seem always poised to feel rejection. At the Muskego conference Laura Lippman, when asked if she was happy, said "I don't think happy people write." Well, she's obviously very successful, but it hasn't made here a floating cloud of happiness. At the same event, Robert Crais talked about how worried he was when he submitted Demolition Angel. What if my editor hates it? What if it sucks?

Made me realize it doesn't matter where you are on the totem pole, insecurity is universal. And you'd better be prepared to make your happiness out of something other than fame and fortune, because that doesn't appear to work, either (and could mess up your writing - wot John said.)

[John McFetridge]

You're right, Dana, it must be February.

The "make it - or the next one - better," is so true. The only thing I'd add is, "better for you." I spent years on the fringes of the movie business (even getting a couple of screenplays produced) and the idea of "better" always meant better for someone else, for what was selling, what producers were (supposedly) looking for. When I turned to novels it took years to get that out of my head and just write the book I wanted. Only then was it really fun and rewarding to sit down and write. And, as the cliche goes, only then did I start selling.

[Pepper Smith]

Yeah, all you can do is keep plugging away at it. Whining takes too much energy. You can't do that and put your best effort into writing.