Your experience is inspiring - though the lead-up sounds painful. Your determination got you where you wanted to be.
I've never understood this thing that I'm forever reading in articles about getting rejected - about 'no need to take it personally - it isn't personal'. I've never had a problem with understanding that it isn't personal. What hurts is that the writing isn't up to scratch. Or am I missing something?
Susiex

I suppose the determination to succeed should drive the writing skill. If you're bloody minded (and I am, I think), you just take on an attitude of squaring your shoulders and thinking to each rejection 'right, well then I'll do better'. If you listen to the stuff that agents/publishers say about your work that resonates with you, improvement should follow naturally.

Looking back now, I can see why work was rejected, but sometimes you need the distance of time to see it. Of course, when we're always learning, I think a lot of what we do seems less than up to par in hindsight, but I put that down to just being a writer.

JB

you just take on an attitude of squaring your shoulders and thinking to each rejection 'right, well then I'll do better'.

Yeah, was it Roger Morris or ColinM who said he went on in the determination to prove his work WOULD be good enough - it took a long time, but eventually he did. I'm just reading Stephen King on Writing - fascinating book - and he had this attitude too.
An algebraic formula for writing might be:

T + W + D = S
H

T being talent, W work, D determination, H humility and S success.
Susiex

I've never had a problem with understanding that it isn't personal. What hurts is that the writing isn't up to scratch. Or am I missing something?

I agree that I usually felt it just needed to be better, and, as you say, in hindsight you start seeing how it could have been. But you are going out there implicitly saying, 'This is the best I can do,' and to have someone say, 'Sorry, your best isn't good enough,' is pretty personal in one sense. And if what you write is a product of your self, then to some degree, you could also read it as 'Your self isn't good enough.'

That's extremely threatening to fragile egos, and that's when it gets taken too personally. Some are crushed forever, assuming that one judgement is gospel, and never send out another word, and tho' rejections should always bear in mind that this stuff is terribly important to us, I don't think that's the rejector's fault. And then there are the people for whom it's too dangerous to acknowledge that there might be any justice in the judgement at all: they shore up their fragile egos by stamping around proclaiming that the whole system's rubbish and only interested in sleb misery memoirs with big tits, and it's all who you know, and being poisonous to anyone who does land a contract. They're the ones who storm into editors' offices and hold knives to their throats till they write the contract.

Which isn't to say that we don't all need lots of online TLC when we're nursing a rejection, of course. Just that when we've stopped swearing and/or weeping we need to find the right balance: yes, it's hugely important and we should learn what we can from it, but no, it's not the end of the world.

Emma

<Added>

Crossed with you, Susie. My version of Stephen K's equation is here:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2007/12/if-technique-an.html

Very well put, Emma. I think that's why sites like WW are so helpful - you can read and read about the precarious nature of submitting but only here at the sharp end do you get an accurate idea about rejection, and, to counterbalance it, success.
Susiex

<Added>

Crossed with you too, Emma!
Your blog entry should be posted above the desk of every aspiring writer.
BTW, the formula was mine, not S.Kings - but he says (about talent):
'While it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it IS possible, with lots of hard work, dedication and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.'

Just read your link, Emma, very interesting, though for my part I do believe luck played a part in that at the very moment I was stuffing my tatty synopsis into an envelope, my agent was speaking to a writers group and telling them he was on the look out for a female thriller writer with a female protagonist...
That said, I suppose he'd have binned it if he thought it was rubbish no matter how perfectly I fitted the mould.
Maybe I'm just more likely to look at things this way as I still don't see myself as having a great deal of talent and as for hard work - Lord knows I can piss around for England.
HB x

Helen, what I was trying to get at is that 'luck' happens because you're persisting in writing and belonging to a group and putting your stuff out there. There may have been luck in it being picked up quickly but as you say, if it hadn't been good enough, it wouldn't have been picked up, and since it was good enough, I can't help thinking it would still have been picked up by some other route, some other day...

Emma

Emma, I wish I could bottle your attitude and take two spoonfulls daily.
My husband believes that cream always rises to the top and thus never puts any success in any area of life down to luck...hard work, persistence, talent, sheer bloody mindedness, yes, but not luck. You make your own luck, apparently.
I think my own 'success', such as it is, has all happened rather fast and thus I'm less inclined to attribute it to any of the above.
HB X

That's the paradox, isn't it: it can be really bitter to hear of someone who has had something we're striving for land in their lap, so we assume they're happy, but it's a double-edged sword, because equally it can seem to say something very negative about how good they are. I don't think you should put yourself down: your meeting was lucky in that it saved you some agonies that others have suffered, but your book being taken on was because it deserved to be. You could say that the milk gets put in the churn in a hundred different ways, with more or less difficulty, but the cream rises to the top because it should.

If you like, my piece of luck is having the surname I do. But heaven help anyone who asks me (or my agent) if I got a publishing contract because of it...

Emma

I tend to agree with Helen's husband. I would think it lucky if someone just came along and handed me a wad of cash for no apparent reason, but everything you gain through hard work, talent and persistence is earned or deserved. You can feel lucky about it, but really, you worked for it, tooth and nail. I think some people like the idea of luck while others see it as quite demeaning to their efforts. I'm in the latter category, I'm afraid. When people tell me I was lucky to have a book published and nab and agent, it's almost a way of them saying you're talents on their own would not have been good enough?

JB

A couple of things that I picked up on whilst at two parties this week (Chicken House LBF party, and RCW Party).

My agent's assistant sends out the rejection letters. When I aske her if that was tough, she answered: "Incredibly tough. Some of the work that we send rejection letters out for is really very good. It's just not right for us at the time."

We all know this. Lady luck plays a big part in our document landing on the right desk at the right time to fill the right needs that the agency has at that particular time.

So luck DOES have a role to play.

The other thing that highlighted this to me was a conversation that I overheard at one party. A publisher came over and asked if my agent had anything: "Girl, 8-11, with a bit of depth."
Just so happened that my agent had just signed up a new author of that very sort.

No luck involved? Yeah, right.

You're talking about coincidence plus good timing there. Nah, I'm being pedantic. It does sound lucky, admittedly, but what I was trying to say really is that I'd never claim luck alone as the basis for any success, but it's all relative.

Best of luck by the way.

JB

JB,

Like I said, I agree with most of what Emma and you were saying: by perservering with writing and continuing to submit in the face of rejections, of course you are giving your work the best possible chance. I think you need to have that pig-headed determination to prove that you have what it takes to get your work out there.

I was just suggesting that a little 'rub of the green' helps make some people's careers take off, when other, perhaps more talented writers struggle to get a chance.

It's a bit like the difference between a successful book and one that never makes the sales it deserves. Success in publishing seems at times to resemble a roulette game.

Place your bets...

S

Yes, I agree. I think I had a knee-jerk reaction because a lot of friends tell me how lucky I am, and sometimes, it feels like they don't take into account how difficult it all is. Well, they're not writers, so I can't be too unfair to them.

I remember sitting in Green Park last summer before I met my agent for the first time, and I certainly invoked every god, spirit or prayer known to man beforehand, I don't mind admitting. I'll probably never know if it worked or not, but the meeting went about 1000% better than I expected. When you've got someone who represents authors you adore sitting opposite you and telling you how much they loved your ideas, it certainly feels very lucky.

JB

I've always taken that to mean send out as many partials as you like, but only have the 'full' out with one agent at a time. If two asked for the full, I'd come clean and let them both know. Might have the added bonus of letting agent A know that your stuff is getting a good response, and make them take it more seriously?