I haven’t published a pep talk in a while, but lately I’ve heard more than one writer get down on themselves in the face of rejection. This never fails to break my heart, so I figured it was time to end my hiatus with something important for all of us to hear.
This pep talk starts a little unorthodoxically. Just roll with it.
Sometimes, dear writer, it’s not about you.
It’s not. It really is not.
If you’ve shown your work, both in and out of the pages of your manuscript, by which I mean making your novel the strongest version of itself it can be and doing your best to build an author platform, then you have to know that, sometimes, it’s not about you.
If it feels like it is, consider that you are looking at what is actually a macrocosm, with multifactorial outcomes that would inveigle a String Theorist, through the highest-powered microscope you could find.
Sometimes, the business of publishing is beyond your control.
Sometimes, your novel is brilliant, but you don’t have a solid platform to go along with it. Or else your novel is not like anything that’s currently on the market, which sounds like a compliment until your would-be agent realizes that in-house sales and marketing teams are going to have a tough time selling the concept to bookstore buyers.
Remember, publishing is a business.
Sometimes, conversely, your novel is brilliant, but it’s TOO MUCH like everything else that’s out there. If you’re trying to sell a quirky romcom in 2015 versus 2020, when the market is flush with them, you’re going to have a harder time of things [she said, dragging herself in the process]. See also: selling a vampire novel in 2001 versus 2010. See also: a postapocalyptic YA vehicle that splits the world into factions pre- and post-Hunger Games.
Sometimes, you just happen to be the third query to use that particular comp title or to be about the American Civil War that that agent has read in the same day. See also: timing’s a b*tch.
Sometimes, the agent you thought was perfect is just not a good fit. That’s not to say they aren’t a nice human being; they just aren’t a good fit for you, your novel, or your vision for your writing career.
Again, publishing is a business.
We love to look up to these gatekeepers because they’re in positions of power, but this can be a slippery slope to the deification of folks who need coffee just as much as you do before they get their day started, folks who ugly-cry from time to time, who run late and who, on the rare occasion, run into glass doors. Those who work in New York’s or London’s publishing industry are human, just like you and me, and at the end of the day, they’re not all kingmakers, even the ones convinced that they are. They get really excited when a king of a manuscript lands in their inbox, sure, but most days, remember, agents are paid on commission. Most days, they’re looking for a reliable paycheck.
It’s not just about you. It’s about so many other factors.
Many now-successful writers got their fair share of rejection before they made it big. Stephen King writes about the rejections he started nailing to his wall as a boy, and in fact, Carrie was rejected thirty times before Doubleday took a chance on it. (And gave him a really small advance for it.)
(For other writers whose famous works first got rejected, check out this list: https://lithub.com/the-most-rejected-books-of-all-time.)
What’s more, many now-iconic writers were not Sally Rooney wunderkinds. Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison was forty when The Bluest Eye debuted (source).
Sometimes, all it takes is one commercially successful novel for agents and editors to take risks on your other work. Often, rejected queries get cleaned up, spit-polished, to become sophomore novels.
So promise me right now that you won’t give up.
Even if you hit 100 agents queried, 100 rejections, on one manuscript, you won’t give up. (Even if you hit a thousand rejections, if writing is your dream, get better at it and don’t give up!) You’ll put that rejected novel in a proverbial drawer, take time to mourn it, and then you’ll keep going. You’ll write another one, learning from the narrative mistakes of your past, and you’ll astound yourself when you look back on what you once thought was good, what you once thought was worthy of publication.