Stages of Rejection

As I once again approach submission time, I am bracing myself for failure. Not in a woe-is-me, lack of confidence way, rather from a position of realism based on past experience. I thought I’d pull out all the rejection letters I’ve saved from the last four years and take a browse – but I couldn’t. Some are still too painful. So why keep them all, like some tatty love-letters from a failed relationship? I’m not sure. In a way it’s because they validate the time I’ve spent writing novels. They are tangible proof that I have tried, I have worked hard – that I have put myself ‘out there’.

Surely I should have developed a rhino’s skin after all this time? Surely the rejection still doesn’t hurt? For the most part, I can logically deal with disappointment - tell myself that a standard rejection isn’t necessarily a condemnation of my work. And I appreciate the odd personal comment, I grasp at the occasional letter which is worded with encouragement. But now and again I get caught out. And the obsessive, emotional process is usually as follows and I wonder if it’s the same for you?

1) Paranoia – why has the agent not replied yet? My submission must have got lost in the post. Perhaps in my covering letter I didn’t grovel enough – or maybe I sounded arrogant. The agent must be on holiday or she’s ill or at some book fair abroad. Perhaps it was a mistake calling the hero and heroine Gordon and Mandy because if she’s Conservative it won’t make it off her slushpile.

2) Assumption – it’s definitely been rejected. I’ve googled the agent’s name and when she takes someone on she always rings them after two days. I’ve already been waiting two weeks. It’s a done deal. Onto the next sub.

3) Tears – the letter slipped through the post box today. Despite number 2) it is still a shock. Tears and chocolate. More tears, more chocolate. My little boy asks why my eyes are runny. My claws-of-steel cat turns away in disgust.

4) Self-pity – I’m never going to make it as a writer. What’s the point of trying any more? All the hard work I’ve put in has been for nothing. More chocolate. More writerly sighs. Woe is me.

5) Anger – What does she mean, my characters seem flat? That my plot’s going nowhere? My husband disagrees, as does Auntie Nell. Who does she think she is? What does she know?

6) Defiance – I’ll show her and write something even better then I’ll post a copy to her when I get a deal. She’ll be cursing the day she let me go. Ha! And double Ha!

7) Acceptance and Resolve – she was right, I can see that now, the characters are flat and the plot is going nowhere. It’s time to tuck this book firmly under my bed. It’s time to move on and work on my writing skills. It’s time to improve.

8) Gratitude – she did me a favour, if it wasn’t for that rejection letter I’d still be working on that project. My new one is genuinely so much better. I’ll sub it to her when the time comes.

9) Amnesia – I can’t wait to send her my new project. This submission process is so exciting! Printing out my chapters, rushing to the post box every morning… Perhaps this book will be the one!

What's in a Name - by Susie

Morwenna Thistlethwaite.

She’s a real person. I came across her in an artist’s catalogue and instantly wanted to include her name in a novel. Gamine, wistful and floaty – inclined to cheesecloth and batting enormous lashes – she’d be a pastie-baking girl from a vast Cornish mining family and the inn-o-cent object of an evil pirate’s passion. A pirate called…

Rex Frothichops. See, I can’t help it. A writing friend anagrammed her husband’s name and came up with this, my all-time favourite. He’s so …nineteenth century. But wait – I can also see him at the beginning of time, a rock-dinosaur with rabies – T.Rex Frothichops.
Sorry. Getting carried away there.

Names are so more-ish, don’t you find? And a good name – or rather the right name – is often hard to find.
There are many name-researching websites on the net, and I’ve just been a-sampling. There are the baby names sites, where you can choose a name according to its popularity in any given year; sites giving the meanings behind names (did you know that Harry means Army Power? The poor lad was predestined for the job), There’s a site where you can generate a name in any language – I asked for a female name in Esperanto and a male name in Bulgarian (‘My Gott –‘ Valentin Boyko’s voice roughened with desire. ‘Glorinda Katida, vot are you doink to me?’ ) And, best of all, there are sites where you can enter details of your character and a name is randomly generated to suit. I put in: ‘oozing, slimy, disgusting, putrid’ and got ‘Vilescum’. Count Vilescum, of Totterdown Towers, who only comes out at night and spends his days floating ominously in dirty bathwater…

How do you choose your characters’ names? Do they arrive, perfectly formed, in your head or on the page, or do you spend weeks searching for them? How did A.A. Milne come up with Winnie-the-Pooh? Would the book have been as successful if the characters had been called Teddy, Tiger, Young Pig and Whingeing Donkey? How did Nabokov (a name to conjure with itself) come up with Humbert Humbert, not to mention Lolita?

Which brings me to titles (of books, I mean, rather than that of Count Vilescum). Sorry to be Eeyorish about this, but the title of your book – and your own name – will be the first, and probably the only, words of your book that will ever be read. As potential readers scan the rows upon rows of book spines in the library or the bookshop, only a small number of titles will leap out at them. Why those particular titles? On-e-ly Gott (as Valentin Boyko might mutter) vould knows. It’s almost impossible to predict what makes a winning title – but the right one can elevate your book from pedestrian to prize-winning.

Take Gary Leon Hill. He caused a storm in 2006 with his book entitled: People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves To Unsuspecting Bystanders And What To Do About It. Non-fiction certainly seems to lend itself to eye-catching titles, though I Was Tortured By A Pygmy Love Queen (yes, really) did pretty well too. My favourite, though, for its simple, unarguable succinctness, is Jack Pelicano’s Bombproof Your Horse

So, dear writer, choose your names with care. They could be the making or the breaking of your book. I went to a talk by Patrick Gale recently, who said that his agent only picked up his first novel because of the title: The Aerodynamics of Pork. I wonder if I could come up with something similar for my new one? Whaddya think, Valentin?
‘Aach – and peegs might fly…’


.

Getting to know you

How well do you know your main character? Better than you know your best friend? Your partner? Better than you know yourself?
I thought I knew the 13-year-old boy at the heart of my children’s book. But there was a common thread to some of the criticisms I’d received on earlier drafts. The voice isn’t quite convincing; I haven’t got a clear enough picture of him; I’m not sure I cared enough about what happened to him. It was a real worry. I tried to address this through plotting and dialogue, and even changed the whole book from third person to first and then back to third again. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I still wasn’t quite there.
There’s lots of advice to be found on this particular problem. Some people recommend filling out a questionnaire on everything from your character’s family history to their favourite food. I’ve no doubt this approach can be very helpful, but in my case, the answer lay in something much more straightforward.
I wasn’t seeing him properly. Literally, seeing him.
And by that I mean that his appearance was all wrong.
It happened like this. When I first started to put the story together, I was writing it for my then nine-year-old son. I gave my character, Josh, my son Joe’s colouring and hair, just because I knew it would make Joe smile when I read it to him (it did). The story changed many times but Josh’s appearance remained the same.
Then about a week ago, I was at the beginning of a major edit and I had a flash of insight that almost knocked me off my chair. Josh doesn’t really look anything like my son. I suddenly had a powerful mental image of a boy with quite different colouring and within minutes I was frantically scribbling down everything from the basics like hair and eye colour, to the fact that he had the end of his little finger missing following an accident as a toddler.
Life had suddenly been breathed into Josh and he was no longer a vehicle for my story, but a real, three-dimensional boy. It was a great feeling and meant that I was able to fly through my latest edit. At last, I really knew Josh.

I’m fully expecting there to still be a million things wrong with the book. But the moment when he became real to me was quite magical. For me, those moments are what writing fiction is all about.
So if you’re having trouble getting to ‘know’ your main character and you’ve tried some of the other tips, why not spend a few moments picturing them? You may be surprised where it takes you.

Sweating the Big Stuff

“You can’t have a story with a divorcée as heroine in a woman’s magazine story.” So said one of my students on a course I ran a couple of years ago – “Writing Short Stories for Women’s Magazines.” She was adamant about this. Because, you see, that was the case thirty years ago, apparently, when she last read a story in a woman’s magazine.

Women’s magazine stories are cosy, with happy endings. They never threaten the status quo. Everyone gets their just desserts and the hero and heroine will always walk off into the sunset at the end.

Are you following me here, fellow womag writers? Because you must get this drivel in the ear too, from time to time – invariably from those higher up the literary food chain, “proper” authors who write angsty novels about incest and abuse and who believe the only ending worth its salt is one when the heroine throws herself under a train. Or from people who would seriously love to write for the market but whose only point of reference is the Woman’s Own their mothers used to read back in the early 60’s when men were men and women were expected to be grateful for it.

But times have changed. For the women’s magazine market I’ve written – and sold – a story set in a woman’s refuge; the tale of a boy who attempts to desecrate his mother’s grave because he can’t forgive her for dying and one about a woman turning to alcohol as a way out of the guilt she suffers after being caught “in flagrante” with her lover on the morning she hears about the death of her husband – and that’s just in the last six months. I’ve read a story about a transvestite and one about a woman who waits for her lesbian lover to arrive. Not to mention the one about a woman returning home to her wheelchair bound husband after a one-night stand.

Gaynor Davies, fiction editor of “Woman’s Weekly” has said that they’ll publish stories on any theme, as long as it’s sensitively handled. So no graphic sex or violence, but after that, the gloves are off.

It’s a real challenge to write a story that will stay in a reader’s mind for longer than the time it takes for her to read it. And there’ll always be a place for the comic tale – never more so than at times of recession.

But – People’s Friend apart - magazine editors love stories that challenge the modern reader. Never forget we live in a modern world and tether your stories to that fact. That’s not to say they should be depressing, but they should never be bland. The trick is, I guess, to tackle a tricky subject head on. Offer a resolution, yes, but steer it away from “happy ever after”.

Look through the current batch of women’s magazine this month. Take your lead from a story that touches your heart, maybe because it tackles a controversial issue head on or perhaps because it deals with a situation you, personally, would really prefer to leave to someone else to deal with because, frankly, it seems way too challenging for you.

Unpick it to the bare bones then try to work out exactly how the writer has managed to flesh out her story. Remember the old adage – in writing it’s not what’s said, but what is whispered. If it’s a good story you’ll feel satisfied, when you reach the end that the outcome is the right one, not cheated into being stuck with the obvious one.

Then have a go at writing one yourself.

I'm A Celebrity - Get Me A Ghost Writer

I have a pet hate in the world of literature (if you could call it that) and that's celebrity autobiographies. Two celebrities who irk me the most are Kerry Katona and Katie Price. Oh, and Victoria Beckham, Sharon Osbourne, Peter Andre, Charlotte Church, and those footballers - the Rooney boy, Ronaldo and Beckham, all of whom have 'penned' their life stories. I can tolerate Graham Norton, Jools Holland, Richard Hammond, Gordon Ramsay and Gary Rhodes but that's not to say I want to read their life stories.Celebrities get away with so much, and when it comes to getting a book deal, publishers are falling over themselves to offer as many noughts as possible. It's hardly surprising too that they're not written by the celebs themselves: many footballers I'm sure struggle with spelling, let alone the construction of a semi-coherent sentence. It's frustrating when the books are ghost-written, so tell me why should I buy them? I can read Hello magazine and get as good a glimpse into their lives as the autobiography. People often snap up autobiographies as Christmas gifts, and apparently sales of celeb life stories account for 50 per cent of pre-festive books bought (note - isn't Waterstones filled during December with folk who look like they have never even opened a book - you see them at the tills holding their copies of Ashley Cole's autobiography?) Is it because people like to revel in Schadenfreude, secretly hoping that someone else's childhood was worse than their own?

Three I really must flag up are Chris Moyles' first offering The Gospel According to Chris Moyles, plus his Difficult Second Book, and Russell Brand's Booky Wook, all of which were written by the folk themselves. And they're genuinely funny too. Well done Chris and Russell - big literary pats on the back! I also must confess that I plan to read Davina McCall's account of her life 'Being Davina' purely because I like her telly warmth and charm, but I'm disappointed she didn't scribble it herself.

Putting aside all my prejudices this morning in the office (Thursday) I opened Parky's autobiography which was freshly delivered by the book club and read the first few lines - "Every morning when I woke, I could see the pit from my bedroom window.." - yes, it's engaging and it held my attention. So, I read on a little...and a little more....

A list of the worst-selling celebrity autobiographies was published last year in the Telegraph and it included efforts by Alec Baldwin (an astonishing 12 copies sold within the first month), Christopher Biggins with just over 2,000 copies sold and surprisingly Jade not so Goody's Catch a Falling Star selling just under 6000 copies within the crucial few weeks following release. And there are some cringe-worthy titles too which should raise a giggle or two: They Made A Monkee Out Of Me - Davy Jones, David Hasslehoff's Don't Hassle The Hoff and Andy Murray's Hitting Back. There's also Gene Simmon's Kiss And Make Up and perhaps the best of the bad bunch Tori Spelling's 'sTori Telling' (an alarming Amazon search yielded a follow-up called 'Mommyhood' due June 09).

In my worst nightmare, I can picture myself in the library, browsing the shelves only to be confronted by an armed and dangerous shelf, full of celebrity autobiographies - in which case I'll start running and shouting 'You're a celebrity, get out of here!"

Guest Blog by Emma Darwin - Entirely Irrelevant

You don’t have to be a celebrity to get published. What you discover, when you’re having that crucial meeting with your publicist, is that her job is to make every author, however dull and obscure, sound irresistibly fascinating. Blurbs and covers can only do so much, and the chief function of reviews is to provide quotes for the paperback. But introduce the writer as a person – a person with a story – and people get curious. And who are we, as professional story-tellers, to balk at that? So your publicist will order the Chardonnay and interrogate you until you come up with something interesting – a hook, an angle – about yourself.

If you’re a banker writing financial thrillers it’s easy. Ex-SAS writing chicklit? Better still. Even a sensitive dissection of bourgeois life in Dewsbury can grab columns if you’re a professional deep-sea diver from Tierra del Fuego. But what if your only angle is nothing to do with you?

I’m putting off getting to the point because I was brought up not to mention the 2-3% of my genes which I have in common with my great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin. (I know the percentage because my genome was dissected on one of the big biology blogs. Weird feeling.) The Darwin industry has been getting steadily bigger for years and my name is my name, as well as my great-great-grandmother’s: I get asked about it anyway. In the tooth-and-claw battle of the bookshop tables you use what you have, and all I have is Darwin.

I’m sure I’m not the only writer whose chief publicity interest is entirely irrelevant, and I’m not complaining: it’s got me coverage I’d never have got otherwise, particularly in that uneasy time before the book’s out there. And if I’m being interviewed, then fair enough: it’s part of my identity. But in a thirty-word listing, sixteen may be about The Ancestor. And bad reviews are an occupational hazard, but how about one which starts ‘Emma Darwin may have smart genes but she doesn’t deploy them well here’? I’ve been asked many times if I would have got a book contract if I weren’t a Darwin. I hope it’s just ignorance that you don’t have to be a celebrity, but maybe it was meant as an insult: in our don’t-show-off culture, am I showing off to talk – when I’m asked to, like now – about my huge, high-achieving family tree? If I say it’s a double-edged sword, which it is, since it plays sometimes painfully to my own middle-child hangups, am I whingeing?

Now my novels The Mathematics of Love and A Secret Alchemy are out there, there’s more else to talk about, but here comes the Bicentenary. Being freelance, I have a web presence and journalists phone: do I say no, when it gets me and my books out there? And, yes, there’s a reason this post is appearing today, The Birthday. I’ve learnt to use what I can’t help having. But I’d rather be read and known for what I write than for such a tiny bit of what I am.

Emma Darwin is a novelist living in London. Find her website at http://www.emmadarwin.com/ and her blog at http://emmadarwin.typepad/thisitchofwriting

The Never-ending Quest

So let's suppose you're a member of an online writers' forum, OK? Say you're trying to keep going in the face of daily threads about £50,000 deals. You gamely reply “congratulations” (with three smilies) to every post celebrating the sale of Japanese rights, and if you're particularly saintly you might even muster up a sympathetic response to a discussion titled “Damn, I've only sold 10,000 copies, now what do I do?”

And you find yourself struggling with the conflict between being pleased for others and being utterly stabbed to the heart. You love your online friends, love their writing and can't wait to see their books in print, so it's not jealousy – it's more internalised than that. It's a weight in your heart always dragging downwards and reminding you that for some reason (and no one will tell you what that reason is) you're not good enough.

And then, though you wish no ill to those published writers, you have to try not to get just a tiny bit irritated when they go on and on about how their book is a load of crap. I mean, really - how ungrateful and needy. It's obvious they are just trying to draw attention to themselves and manipulate other people into telling them they're brilliant.

But, you know, having at last managed to get into the surreal situation of having a novel about to be published, I've started to think those authors aren't fishing for compliments – if they're anything like me, they have genuine moments (sometimes very long moments of, like, years) of believing their writing isn't much cop. Sometimes it all seems as though the publishers have made a big mistake, or Jeremy Beadle will pop up at the launch to say it was all a cruel joke. (Except he's dead, so he'd be a zombie, and that would admittedly be quite cool.)

The self-doubt and quest for validation never seem to end. Is it just me, or can other writers never be satisfied? I wouldn't be surprised if Stephen King sits there going: “Hell, I only made three million bucks this week. Everybody hates me. I might as well go work in Taco Bell.”

To start with, I thought just finishing a novel would be enough. That's a great achievement, right? I'd have got further than all those people who think it would be easy to write a book if only they didn't have six hours of telly to squeeze in every evening.

Then I did finish it, and I thought: if I send it out and get some rejections, that'll be an even better achievement. Lots of people are too scared to try. Then I thought if I could just get a personalised rejection, I'd be happy. I just wanted to know one way or the other whether my book had some potential or whether it was the crappiest piece of crap that ever existed in the crap history of the crap world. Then I got the first wonderful 'positive' rejection, but once the excitement had worn off, I knew I would only be happy if I could get a request for the full manuscript ... and so it goes on.

Now I'm on the road to publication and it's an exciting time. I feel as though I've broken through the wall of enigmatic form letters and unanswered emails, and found that there are lots of lovely people and great opportunities on the other side. So I'm resolving to enjoy it all in the present, and not keep hankering after the next tiny bit of validation, whether that's an email from the publisher or a comment on my blog, a few website hits or an improvement in the Amazon ranking. I'm going to try to be a satisfied writer.

I mean, if my book could just manage to sell – I dunno – a hundred copies, that'll be enough. Maybe even some of them to people I've never met. I'd be really happy with that. Honest.

http://www.carolinerance.co.uk/

Thank you to Stuart Yeates for his photo of Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge.