Hello and welcome.
The good news is I always slept with the funny guys and never the jocks...
The bad news is you're gonna have to toughen up.
Writng is always about rejection. Be it from agents, publishers, reviewers, book buyers. We all get a kicking. Frankly, it comes with the territory.
If it were me I'd send out some more subs - if they all say the same, great idea, poor writing, then at least you know what you need to work on.
HB x

I definitely take all your messages very seriously and the advice is excellent.

Another confusion is the fact that I submitted a full manuscript. I did this purely out of lack of experience and ignorance about submitting, and neither full manuscruipt I submitted was read from front to back. I expect they only read 3 chapters and the synopsis (if they even got that far after realising I'd killed the idea with my writing style!) Neither agent told me how much to submit, because as I was crossing industries within the media - from docs to publishing - all contact was very informal.

As for rejection, you're completely right. I think my main hurt was from being built up to think that it was going soemwhere by these agents, and then let down. And it dragged all my old rejection history back to the fore! If I'm like this while trying to write a book, imagine what a nightmare it is trying to end a relationship with me!

Thanks again

One pitfall of this kind of informal contact, when you're new to this particular game (and every industry's game has different rules) is that you don't know what kind of thing the contact is supposed to be supplying. You think that the agent will be thinking in terms of taking you on - after all, that's what agents do, isn't it - but they think they're doing a favour to an industry friend (or whatever the contact was) in offering advice on a manuscript, for the author to take or leave in reworking the book. Maybe if they'd had time they'd have offered some hints as to how to rework it, but that week they didn't...

I have to say that I don't think submitting the full ms damaged your chances, even if it's not usual. They'll have read at least some of it, as it was a personal contact, but experienced readers know pretty early on whether or not a book is something they could take on.

One golden piece of advice I was given years ago, is that to be a writer you need to have wto selves - a writing self, and a business self. The business self is partly for answering emails promptly and keeping receipts, but it's also for protecting your writing self: for understanding why these painful things happen as they do (or for understanding that they're random and beyond your control), and not letting that get to your much more vulnerable, confidence-needing writing self. Takes practice, but it's important.

Emma

How much do you want to be a writer? Do you want it more than you wanted to learn to drive, or go to university?

People don't give up learning to drive after the first test failure, or give up wanting to go to university because one of the places they apply to rejects them. (Well, some do, but most don't.)

If you're serious about wanting to learn how to write, apply to more than one MA. I don't know much about UEA, but I get the impression that it concentrates on a particular sort of fiction - I've never heard that it has much of a non-fiction strand. The rejection may simply have been that your type of writing didn't fit what they had to teach. Why not find an MA that specialises in non-fiction? Or at least an evening class? Or a correspondance course?

I read an interesting post by Neil Gaiman (I think) about how hard it is when people give him a piece of writing and say 'Am I cut out to be a writer?' Because actually all you can say is 'This piece is (or isn't) publishable' - but that doesn't mean that another piece in a different style, or at a different stage in that person's writing career, might be a Booker winner.

I read an interesting post by Neil Gaiman (I think) about how hard it is when people give him a piece of writing and say 'Am I cut out to be a writer?' Because actually all you can say is 'This piece is (or isn't) publishable' - but that doesn't mean that another piece in a different style, or at a different stage in that person's writing career, might be a Booker winner.

Yes, this happens with people who want editorial reports - and all I can say is much as Gaiman says. Somtimes if I know a bit more about them I can say that they obviously have some of the attributes which a writer needs (if they do. Everyone always has one, even if they're missing the other 99) but that doesn't make them a writer, and the fact that they're missing others doesn't make them not a writer.

And I'd agree that there are plenty more fish in the sea than UEA - 85 Masters courses out there last time I looked, and lots of them have lots of other advantages than the prestige which UEA still seems to hold.

Emma

hello across the miles,
You are a writer - its as simple, in my opinion- as that;
Thats why you find rejection difficult - what we write is part of us and expresses our inner self; to have publishers almost dismiss work is hurtful ...but -
writing isnt an option for writers - its part of who you are; I am no literary expert, but - I have read a lot and lots of what I read (that has been published and raved over) has - in my humble opinion - been bilge.
Quite a bit has to do with contacts etc and this has nothing to do with your writing abilities though I know it dosent help to say this.
Write and write - accept only criticism that you feel is constructive and - bin the rest.
Some people think that writers ought to dutifully accept all criticism, nomatter how harsh or demaeaning - I dont think along those lines.
Its hard work and sometimes enough to make bitter tears flow but - in my opinion - its all part of the 'process'.
Don't doubt yourself - if your work needs work - you will do it.
I believe in you because of the passion in the words you wrote - You are a writer; its a rocky patch, probebly one of many but, you'll get there.
best wishes,
Linda.

I think you've been given lots of great advice, but I'm going to put in my two penn'orth because I've had some limited success with non-fiction and because I've seen lots of documentary films and know something of the commitment that goes into them. (Most recently Terence Davies's wonderful 'Of Time and the City', more like a poem than a film, and a DVD about the Basque country that was so boring it was the first I've ever sent back unread to sofacinema.com ) I'd like to see you succeed.

As some-one whose first non-fiction book was published when I was 59, I had to laugh when you said you were 25, but I didn't really start until I was asked to follow up a 1,000 word director profile with a book. In that case the publisher was just starting out and said he didn't want to see it until it was finished. Then someone I met once advised me to write a final chapter about future deveopments, which I did. The 'advisor' then got a cover credit!

I've written another book since, which was rejected and I reformatted it entirely, although I had no feedback other than 'our list is full'. I've recently been composing a query letter and proposol.

I've also been on courses and read books on non-fiction writing.Time is on your side, so I'd advise you to haunt bookshops and libraries and read books with advice to non-fiction writers. 'How to get published' books always have a chapter on submitting.

Should you give up? You could read Alison Baverstock's book, 'Is There a Book in You' to start with. It even has a little quiz designed to answer the question. I don't think you will give up because you have transferable skills from an unusually demanding field. You may have to be patient.

Sheila



<Added>

Again, drawing on my own experience, I'd add you can subscribe to writers' magazines, and join a local writers' group or two. You may think they'll be all about fiction, but any non-fiction expert will tell you there's a lot of cross-over and narrative techniques are just as important for non-fiction as for fiction. You could try some short story writing.

Oh, and I'd advise starting a blog if you haven't already got one. Sorry if that's irrelevant. I'll check. Good luck.

Sheila

Maybe thinking about being 'meant to be' a writer is the wrong approach. The questions are, do you write regularly, and do you enjoy it? If the answer to both is yes, you're as much a writer as anyone.

Hi Candiflare

A belated welcome on my part to WW! The only person doubting your ability as a writer is you. Rejection is always painful, but the joy of acceptance is made all the sweeter by that rejection. As a performance poet, I've experienced it many times, both the pain and the pleasure of being a writer.

As for actually enjoying writing... for me it's a sickness, a curse and a blessing. I enjoy the relief it gives, but sometimes the rewards seem distant. But that is me, not you. If you write you are a writer. If you then have the good fortune to be published, all the better! Keep writing, keep posting, keep commenting and - above all - keep reading.

James

No - you must NEVER stop writing. If you are compelled to write - as you obviously are - then you should not let others dissuade you.
One man's meat is another man's poison and somewhere out there is someone willing to publish your work as you have written it...maybe not without editorial adjustments, but don't let anyone change your style. Don't give up... keep looking.

Rejection comes, in whatever form, but it comez

There will always be someone who doesn't like your work and I saw an interview with an editor who rejected the Harry Potter novels; he was embarrassed to say the least.

Rejection is often an opportunity to redress and repair deficiencies in your work. I know as that's how I treat rejection now..it's a re-evaluation tool (and a powerful one too)

How can someone else have 'your novel' published incidentally? Can you explain?

Sean