Not getting picked for a team

 

 

 Getting no likes at PitMad feels like not being chosen for the kickball teams in grade school. It's not current trauma, it's past trauma that complicates the feeling. I tell myself that PitMad doesn't determine my worth or the worth of my books.

It is a setback, sure, just as it has been with other #PitMads and #SFFPits. But it's more a testimony on my ability to write pitches, the matter of thousands of pitches flowing across Twitter at the same time, the glut of submissions in fantasy writing. 

I need to find a way around this. Maybe improving my pitches will help. Maybe I should work on making my query letters better (which I am doing). 

I can just quit or I can beat my head against the wall -- or I can improve. And, I guess, pray.

What do I do now?

"I'm just not as compelled by your story as I would like."

This pretty much summarizes the rejections I have gotten lately, and I wish I could interpret the message so I can improve my books. What does this mean? What would it take to be compelling? 

I'm frustrated and don't know what to do at this point. I don't know whether it's just their taste or the popularity of my current memes or my writing. 

I don't know where I can send my work for review because my work has already been through a developmental editor and beta readers. Is there a type of editor for "not compelling enough"?

I don't mind criticism is there's an idea of how to remedy. I have nothing to go on here. 

Any ideas, readers? 

Optimism and the Aspiring Author

I wish I had more patience.

I'm playing the long game, wanting to be traditionally published. And it's a long game, because the market is glutted with people like me who want to be published. The market is fickle, as it wants to pick books without risk. And the market is shrinking, because there are fewer readers.

I have invested a lot in my books. Developmental edits, beta reading, and sometimes massive rewritings. I'm now at a point where I don't think I can improve them any more. (I could, of course, be wrong). I have gone through cycles of rejection, and I don't know if I can go through it again.

But I do, because I have optimism. Every morning I wake up believing that my life could change in one day. I've heard enough stories where someone's life changes tragically in one moment; I believe it's just as likely that my life can change for the better. So as long as I have my works in the hands of agents and publishers, I can hope.

Rejections and Cognitive Distortions

This is probably a rerun from way back when, but:

Sometimes I wonder why I put my books out there.

Ask any writer after a rejection, and you'll probably hear the same misgivings. I myself been rejected by so many agents that I thought I'd get over this. I haven't. 

I think the two things that keep me from quitting are: 1) my short memory, and 2) noting the negatives -- cognitive distortions -- are not real.

Cognitive distortions

Cognitive distortions are statements we make to ourselves to define our reality -- but in actuality just make us miserable. (Positive Psychology.com. 2019)

For example, I just went through an online pitch contest where writers try to get attention from agents about their books. I did not succeed. So I combined this with all the rejections I've gotten and started talking to myself like this:

"I'm a bad writer."

"Nobody likes my writing."

"I'll never get published."

These are all examples of cognitive distortions. 

"I'm a bad writer." -- All or nothing thinking. "I'm either perfect or bad." Also labeling.

"Nobody likes my writing." -- Mind reading. How do I know this?

"I'll never get published." -- Fortune-telling. If I can predict the future, can't I win the lottery? 

In reality, I can't predict the future, Nor can I be the worst writer ever if I got through college. I can name people who have liked my writing. These realizations are known as contradictions.

How to start:

It helps to write this down on paper. Here are the steps:

1) Write down the thoughts that are bothering you

2) Identify the cognitive distortions. If  you look for "cognitive distortions" on Google, you will find many sources. My favorite resource is here.

3) Come up with an alternative thought: 

"I'm a bad writer." -- "There are people better and worse than me"

"Nobody likes my writing." -- "I have had short fiction and poetry published"

"I'll never get published." -- "Never is a long time; and if you never get published, it might have nothing to do with you"

4) The important question: what is my next action?

When your mind is clear, you can determine your next move to live your life most authentically.

What now?

Get the list of cognitive resources and the PDF journaling sheets at the site below. Do this when you're feeling negative about life. Keep it up. After a while, you'll only need to do this as a reminder.

Positive Psychology.com.(2019). Cognitive distortions: When your brain lies to you (+ PDF Worksheets). Available:

https://positivepsychology.com/cognitive-distortions/ [January 14, 2020]

Writing for Myself

I think I've passed through the other side of my dejection about not getting published. I've received enough rejections (for novels and poems and short stories, by publishers and agents and Pitch Wars). What does that leave?

Writing and improving for myself, primarily. Not letting my self-esteem be at the mercy of publishers and agents. Of course, I would like to be published (I have a couple little things published, and it's fun).  I'd like to have a novel published. I'd like to be published somewhere that people actually read.

I'm willing to keep trying, because the rejections aren't really that painful anymore. I can take more until my writing hits the right person, whoever that is. 

Wish me luck.

********

I took off yesterday from writing the blog because I'M ON VACATION FOR A WHOLE WEEK! 

Ok, I got that out of my system. 

I'm a writer, though. I have things to do over vacation:

• Edit one short story for a short story contest.
• Edit a couple poems (minor edit)
• Edit Whose Hearts are Mountains, which seriously needs a developmental editor because I don't know if I'm going in the right direction
• Rethink this whole writing thing (which I do once a week).

I don't know where I'm going

I know I've been writing very boring posts lately, and for that I apologize. My justification (not excuse) is NaNo and projects.

What have I been thinking about lately? NaNo and projects. Ok, that's not a good start to a blog.

I've also been thinking about my relationship with writing. On one hand, I've hit some very positive rejections that have 1) given me ideas of how to improve, and 2) have said positive things about my writing. 

I might actually be taking my writing more seriously than I have before, and with that I wonder more if I can get my writing to the point where it deserves being published. I don't know if I've gotten there with my stories, and I wonder what it would take to get to that point. 

I still have some big things out there -- I have Prodigies at DAW, Apocalypse at Tor, Voyageurs in a novella contest, a submission to Pitch Wars, and -- well, I don't think I will win any of these. And I don't know what to think about this. 

It's November First?!?

I'm sorry for not writing yesterday -- I was pretty sick.

I've been fighting a cold or something over the past two weeks, but yesterday morning it went supernova -- I ached so badly I couldn't move, I coughed constantly, had a sore throat -- so I stayed home and slept for 20 hours. 

Only to wake up on November 1st and realize -- OMG, it's NANO TIME!

So today, as promised, I have to spend at least two hours today editing*, something I have been avoiding up till now. Two hours. When am I going to do this? When?

Deep breath. I have time after 2 PM today, being that it's a Friday and all and there won't be any meetings today. And I have a place -- the Board Game Cafe.

All I need now is the initiative.

Oh, by the way, I had a poem make Submittable's Rejection Horror Stories 2019. (Mine is the poem).


***

* I'm a rebel this year, doing some much needed editing instead of writing something new. On NaNoWriMo, I'm lleachie.

Sorry for the Debbie Downer

I got a big rejection last night -- CRAFT's first chapter contest. It would have provided lots of opportunity and support toward publication of a book. It was a long shot submitting, because I think they favor literary fiction and I write genre/literary crossover. 

It was worth a try. I'm trying to analyze whether the effort I spend writing and improving is worth the results. Whether the money I invest (in dev editing, in reader's fees for short fiction, for writers conferences) is yielding enough return on investment. Whether staying in writing because I've invested so much is just the sunk cost fallacy in action. 

I keep going back to writing, fancying that it will be my retirement career. But for it to be a career, I have to go someplace with it. I need to be published; otherwise it's just a hobby.

I really have to figure this out.

Experiment results:

About a month ago, I made the vow that I would go about writing as if I'd already been published. Here's the result: 

I will get back into novel writing for NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) in November. I've already committed to a novel -- I'm going to tackle the book I've been postponing for the longest time, Gods' Seeds. So if I don't start noveling (is that a verb?) before then, I will go back to writing novels in November.

Yes, I was considering quitting, but my developmental editor is suggesting I keep writing, and I respect her judgment. I think it's good to have external voices to help counter the dreary self-doubt that writers have a tendency toward. 

My dev editor also suggested trying out for Pitch Wars, which is a competitive process by which one can get an intense pitch workout. I will be trying for this, because I have the desire to improve.


And I'm still submitting, mostly short stories and flash fiction, but also queries on Apocalypse. I may send out to one or two novel publishers this weekend because I expect a rainy time. 

In writing as if I've already been published, all I've lost is the negative self-talk. I think I could like this.

Odd Place

I'm in an odd place about my writing.

Weeks ago, I gave up the need to be published. Since then, I've been writing stories, submitting those and poetry to various outlets, where they may or may not get published, may or may not get any readership if they're published.

I've gotten a few more rejections from agents for Apocalypse. It doesn't bother me much.

It seems to me that I poured myself into my writing because I wanted recognition. I wanted readers. I wanted to get a shiny star for publishing.

I had an empty checkmark on my bucket list.

Now that I have gotten runner up on a fiction contest and about to see some flash fiction in publication, I've checked that box.

My one worry is that I don't feel as possessed about writing. No dreams of being published dangled before my head like the proverbial carrot. I could never quite reach it. I feel like maybe I'm slowly giving up, and I don't know if I want to do that.

I guess seeing how this evolves will be another adventure.

Shedding illusions

This blog entry meditates on my horoscope from Rob Brezsny, whose horoscopes are in and of themselves meditations. It can be found here:

I have lost many illusions about writing, some of which are embarassing to admit, although I will admit them anyway.

• I thought people would be impressed with me for being a writer.
• I thought it would be easy to get published because I'm a good writer and because I'd been writing to refereed journals for years with little difficulty.
• I thought my first draft was my final draft because I make very few grammatical and spelling errors.
• I thought my talent would shine through mediocre query materials. 
• I thought writing a blog would get me lots of followers.
• I thought I wasn't a real writer because I hadn't gotten published.
• I thought my writing must be bad because agents didn't bite.
• I thought I should quit writing because I hadn't been published.
• I thought the accomplishment was in publishing, not writing.
• I thought writing would change my life.

I dreamed of book release parties (I still do), meetings with agents, having my picture on the back of a book cover, book signings, ex-boyfriends having to choke on seeing my name on a book cover (I have always dated nerds.) These, especially the ex-boyfriend part, are also illusion for now. I may or may never get to see the reality.

These were the illusions I have shed over the past several years. Except the last one, because I think writing must have changed my life, but not in big momentous ways.

Where to from here? 

The Changing Seasons of the Academic Calendar

It's August first, and I can feel the season change even though it's warm outside. That's because I base my seasons on the academic calendar, and there are only three seasons: fall semester, spring semester, and summer.

I'm approaching the end of summer right now, so I'm beginning to prepare for fall semester, updating my online classwork, getting a new work computer, finishing up my internships, cleaning up and rearranging my office (already done!), setting up my calendar ... the rhythm of life changes.

Fall semester is the beginning of my calendar, as it brings new things: A shiny new school year, new students, beginning meetings (ok, not everything about the new school year is wonderful). It also embraces football (American) tailgates, dressing up for Halloween, the feast of Thanksgiving, the Christmas season and its associated rituals on a college campus. 

Spring semester starts with winter -- the Christmas snow is now slushy and dirty, the beginning of the semester meetings seem like same old same old, and Valentine's Day as a holiday just doesn't measure up to Christmas. But then come Spring, and the unexpected: the Northwest Yeti comes out of hiding, there's a big cow statue in front of the Hy-Vee grocery store, art installations spring up like mushrooms, and students plunge into the chilly waters of Colden Pond for charity. 

Then we come back to summer, where things slow down, and faculty spend their summers teaching abroad or taking on interns or taking summer classes or teaching short, intensive summer classes. And going on vacation. My summer has been spent supervising interns, taking a class for my certification in Disaster Mental Health, doing moulage (simulating physical injury and illness for training purposes), and taking a mini-vacation. And writing. 

So that is my year, and the signs of a seasonal change keep popping up: the announcement of beginning of semester meetings, the back-to-school sales, discussions of how well our football team may do this year (we have one of the best Division II teams in the nation, which for those of you in other countries would be like a lower division soccer league), and emails from students trickling in. 

It should be a good year.

******************

Yesterday was a tough day -- two rejections (one agent, one submission of a short story). I don't feel so bad about the short story rejection, because I think my choice of genre (fantasy) might keep my work from being accepted by some markets. And there's a lot of competition.

I need to toughen up about agent rejections. 

I truly believe at this point that I'm getting rejections because of something as simple as fashion, and I will believe that until someone says otherwise. I'm willing to improve, but I've improved as much as dev editors, beta readers, publishing coaches, and my own judgment have allowed me to.

Please wish me luck. I'm serious. 

What if everyone rejects me?

So I have twenty-six queries out right now. No, twenty-five, because I got a same-day rejection yesterday -- same day service! I'm going to stop querying for a while (I have close to 45 left to send) to see what happens with this.

I have to remind myself that there are several reasons why queries get rejected that have nothing to do with the quality of my book: 

• The topic of my book isn't "hot" right now
• The agent only has one slot left in their list and they know exactly what they want to put in it and it's not my book
• My query didn't "speak" to them or they didn't "feel" it (literal rejections I've gotten)
• The agent had a bad day (I'm not kidding)
• There's a lot, a LOT more queries coming in than there are books being sold in traditional publishing

So I'm left with that question, always: What do I do if I get 25 more rejections?

I send the rest. 

And if I don't get an agent then, I tweak things and try again. And remind myself that the agents are rejecting my query, not me.

Wish me good happy things

Well, I got a rejection in a short story contest, but it's not bothering me too much. I didn't even get honorable mention. I think they were looking for literary fiction, which is high concept fiction that doesn't touch genres. I write genre fiction, specifically science fiction/fantasy. I may need to be a little more specific as to who I send to. 

I'm pushing myself to go drink coffee and write at the Game Cafe. I don't think I've been there in two weeks, and that might be part of the reason why I've been having trouble motivating. When I'm feeling down, the closer I am to my bed, the harder it is to motivate. 

My choices on projects are either: 1) keep revising on Gaia's Hands or 2) keep writing on Hands (No, not at all confusing), the origin story for Grzegorz Koslowski (apologies to Polish readers; I can't get that little mark through the l to work). I might feel motivated enough to go through Gaia's Hands today. 

Wish me luck and motivations and good happy things. I still have a couple submissions out there and one query to an agent. 

The Daily Submission

Strangely, the daily rejection submission gives me more hope than might be expected.

To those who haven't been following my log, I have started submitting flash fiction/poetry and short stories I've written on a daily basis, one per day, using Submittable. This means that, given the odds of being published with all the submissions coming in, I have been receiving a rejection a day.

I don't focus on the rejections, strangely. I focus on the fact that I, at the moment, have six submissions (counting Prodigies at DAW, a manuscript for a novel) out. 

I don't know how much longer I can continue this exercise, because there are little readers fees nickeling and diming me -- four dollars here, six dollars elsewhere. But so far, it's given me hope. 

A Rejection a Day

I think I'm becoming more sanguine about rejection. 

I'll never like rejection, although one woman I met at Gateway Con said that she loved rejection because it meant another person read her stuff and knew her name. 

I've been practicing my rejections. I've got Submittable (a submissions software) bookmarked on my computer and I try every day to submit a little something -- a short story, flash fiction, a poem -- to see if anything gets accepted. I'm hoping for acceptance. So far, I've been getting tiny rejections, and that's not bad.

Of course, I know myself -- I'll be good about rejections till I get a major rejection. Like the one I'll probably possibly get for Prodigies. 

But even then, I know that a rejection doesn't mean that my writing is bad, but could mean that my writing was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means that it's time to examine the piece and try, try again.

The joys of rejection

I am beginning to like rejection.

No, honestly, I don't like rejection. After all, who likes rejection? Who gets up in the morning and says, "I'm so looking forward to getting rejected!"?

I like improving my work, honing my craft (although that latter phrase sounds so pretentious to me and nothing like the actual process with all its sweat and tears and cutting savage chunks out of a work in progress). 

I like looking at an old draft and wondering how I thought that was the book as it should be. 

I like the image of myself as someone who cares enough about their work to seek out a developmental editor. Who cares enough about their readers to not put out a rough version of that book.

I also like the idea of getting published, so wish me luck.

Hard Work

Got a rejection for a short story yesterday. I'm not too upset; I think I shoehorned my entry into the theme and it didn't quite fit. I only have one thing out there now, and that's Prodigies with a major press. The likelihood of this being accepted is very low, I'll admit, but it will still hurt a lot if I get rejected.

What from there? Try to shop out the dev-edited version of Voyageurs, which is short at 70,000 words but we'll see. Work on the rewrite of Apocalypse (which will take a few months at best guess) and send it back to my dev editor.  See what tweaks might help Prodigies' saleability and shop it back out. Send Whose Hearts are Mountains to dev edit. See if I can salvage Gaia's Hands in case Apocalypse gets sold and it needs a prequel. Write something else, maybe finish Gods' Seeds.

It's hard work, and so far has been fruitless. But if I'm going to be published, I want it to be my best, and my expectations have been raised by beta-readers and dev editors and my own revelations about where my stories could go. 

Someday, I hope,my hard work will bear fruit.

Springtime and Struggles

Prodigies just got rejected by a small press -- the usual "I don't think this is a good fit for us". Remember this is one of about twenty-plus rejections of the seriously revised version of Prodigies.

I'm currently rewriting Apocalypse (which in and of itself used to be two books) to add back some of what I lost in the combining. It's hard to do right now because of the rejection. It's very discouraging, and my mind isn't wrapping around it very well.

Prodigies is still out at DAW, and the highest likelihood (given other evidence) is that they will reject it. Being accepted by DAW after being rejected by a small press would be like getting a Nobel Prize for something that failed to get a ribbon at the county fair. Yet my mind still fantasizes about the next step with DAW as if the next step isn't a rejection letter.

I'm not sure I like optimism. I feel like I'm just setting myself up for disappointment.

What's next? I rewrite Apocalypse, which I think will take longer than originally writing its two pieces took. (Writing is easy; doing it right is harder). I talk to my dev editor about what we can do with Prodigies to attract a little more attention to it. I go to that writers' conference in St. Louis in June.

 Or I give up. I've talked about that before, but I don't know how to quit.

Making Peace with Winter

I'm definitely dealing with the winter blahs.

I'm not depressed-depressed, just feeling bleak. My life matches the outdoors -- icy gray, devoid of new growth. I have no new ideas for writing right now, no inspirations, no breakthroughs in getting published.

I need to make peace with this winter. Do I always need to be productive, always striving toward something, always trying to make something blossom in my life? I don't know; I feel best when I've just sent out queries, in love with the potential of my work being brought to a wider audience. I feel worst when I get a rejection -- I got another one last night. Thus is the way of winter.

How does one weather winter? By sheltering oneself against the chill and waiting. Maybe this is what I need to do -- take a break from writing, from editing, from sending out queries, from calling myself a writer. Maybe I need time to figure out how to reinvent myself again, as that's been a big part of writing for me -- trying to reinvent myself.

Maybe I will become something new come spring, when the ice melts and seeds come bursting out of their shells.