More often than not, a book grows to its publishable form on the back of a load of rejection. It is a necessary part of the art of a writer, a baptism of fire wherein the simply good can become mindblowing excellent.

How right you are. Maybe we should see all those rejections as runners do their training. I don't suppose runners approaching a marathon think, 'and if I don't win, all those miles will be a total waste of time!' do they?

Emma

The vast majority of writers will rarely have the success they think they have earned or deserve. That is a fact of Life.

The competition is fierce and the demands of the market place so varied that a great deal depends upon luck as well as competence and skill as a writer.

Nevertheless the market is growing in its insatiable demand for 'entertaining communication', particularly in worldwide Television where there is a need for 'good' writing to replace much of the dross that
appears.

Unfortunately we are going through a period where much of the booksellers' shelf space is taken up with biographies of almost non-entities, flash-in-the-pan sports personalities and 'celebrities' of little talent and influence.

At least there has been the growth of self-publishing and the spread of internet publishers; this will be a growing market and where the prestige of the writers will increase.

HOW writers react to rejections is by appreciating the tough nature of the business and by plugging away, writing more, trying to improve their writing and by telling themselves that it will all 'come out right' in the end.

There is no alternative to acceptance of this market situation; but what you do is to work on having the most positive and determined reaction AFTER you receive the rejections.

Len

Very true Len! I couldn't have put it better myself. Keep on plodding on, when you hit a wall get a sledgehammer, because you will eventually knock it down brick by brick,lol. Linda 'Who is getting her stuff ready for a radio interview in the morning'

Len, I agree with almost everything you said except this bit.

HOW writers react to rejections is by appreciating the tough nature of the business and by plugging away, writing more, trying to improve their writing and by telling themselves that it will all 'come out right' in the end.

Sometimes the best thing to do is for the writer to invest his or her time and energy in a more positive, productive activity and, by productive, I don't only mean financially, I also mean emotionally and intellectually rewarding. For others, the best thing to do is persist in the hope that they can break the odds. But whatever the choice, one thing that I think is important is to try to separate as much as possible one's sense of self-worth from one's success or otherwise as a writer. It's not easy to do (at least for me) but I think it's worth working on. There are a lot of truly wonderful people in this world who are completely illiterate and there are very successful authors, both literary and commercial, who are total jerks.
Ashlinn

try to separate as much as possible one's sense of self-worth from one's success or otherwise as a writer.

I think that's very true. It's also important to separate one's sense of writerly self-worth from success or otherwise in the industry. Have written a terrific novel, and having someone in the industry think they can make money publishing it, are two separate (though not entirely unrelated) things. What's so damaging is when we let the only judges of whether our work is any good be people who can't help having at least one eye on the marketplace.

But there is a tension between different components of one's self worth. Some of the ways that I need to behave as a writer are not particuarly admirable in my other role as a mother. And yet being a mother is as terribly (I use the word deliberately) important to me as being a writer is.

Emma

I also agree with what Ashlinn said about self-worth as a person versus validation as a writer. I.e., they are not the same thing. But it's the hardest thing to get them separated.

The conversation seems to be veering a little towards can writers be good people, in the widest sense. Is what we do morally laudable? Writers are often like spies and thieves, taking things from life and using them for their own purposes. It's not a very nice thing to do. We can't expect to be universally popular. I'm reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty and I can't help thinking that so much of it must be based on actual people, refractions of his friends. If that is the case, I'm sure they're flattered to find themselves in the book, but they must be thinking, 'All the time he was watching us and making notes - and judging us.'

This is off topic though. I share Emma's wish, for another way of writers to get validation besides a book deal with a commercial publisher. The internet has a lot to offer there, I think.

I remember reading a biography of Julia Roberts, in which her first agent said that for two years she went to audition after audition and got nothing but knock-backs (and very rarely even a call-back); but that when she was rejected if she was told she had a nice smile, that's the part she heard and clung on to. I remember thinking that's why she's Julia Roberts and not an embittered waitress and it's always stayed with me. Dunno if that helps anyone else, but it does me ...

Andrea

when she was rejected if she was told she had a nice smile, that's the part she heard and clung on to

I think what each of us hears and sees is controlled as much by what's in our heads as by what's out there. The test is, if you're walking down a railway platform, and someone sitting on a bench turns their head to watch you as you pass, what do you think they're thinking?

Actually, you won't ever know, so you might as well try and train yourself to think the most flattering possibility, not least because then you get that spring in your step that really does make the person on the next bench fancy you, or whatever. Or at least, remind yourself that the most flattering one is just as likely as the least. The worst that will happen is that you take a compliment straight when it was meant ironically, and that's not so terrible.

The writer's equivalent when that MS comes thudding back onto the mat, is to believe the nice things absolutely and congratulate yourself of doing them so well. And not to allow their reasons for not taking it to spread into anything more than ordinary market sense: if they say their list is full, it probably is, and if they say it loses momentum in the final third, then that AND NO MORE is what's wrong with it. It isn't all rubbish, you weren't silly to submit it, and they're not roaring with laughter at your presumption or your work.

Emma