HOW I KEPT GOING IN THE FACE OF REJECTION, AND HOW YOU CAN TOO

Elizabeth Breck

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

I had written a novel—a murder mystery. I had gotten a literary agent in less than two months, which is a superhuman feat as anyone who has attempted to get a literary agent will attest. We edited the novel, and then we sent it out far and wide. Publishers were actually reading my book! All I had to do was wait…and wait. The first five rejection emails weren’t too discouraging (narrator’s voice: They got discouraging).

Twenty-five rejections and a year and a half later, we realized the book had to be shelved. None of the rejections were specific: they were things like, “Great writing, great pacing, just not for us,” so there was nothing I could fix. The book just didn’t sell. It was one of the lowest moments of my life. Especially since the main character in the mystery series I’d planned was based on me, a real-life licensed private investigator. I didn’t have another “me” to write about. That could’ve been the end of my publishing journey right there—if I had given up.

The journey began when I decided to go back to school and get a bachelor’s degree so I could attend law school. I was forty-six and a French major, but when I transferred from community college to the University of California San Diego, I switched my major to Writing. My first couple of years at college had reminded me how much I loved writing, and anyway I decided I knew enough French. I wanted a full ride to law school, so I worked hard to get straight A’s. 

And then I got breast cancer.

It was my senior year, the year I needed to take the LSATs and apply to law schools. That’s okay, I thought, I’ll take a break from LSAT prep class, I’ll take a couple of weeks off school, a couple of weeks off my PI business, and then I’ll be right back on target to start law school immediately after graduation. HA. Even I, Ms.-I-can-do-anything-I-set-my-mind-to, knew that was a reach. I decided to put law school off for a year. Besides, something else was happening: I had started writing fiction. And liking it.

In my fiction classes I wrote about my alter ego, whom I’d named Madison Kelly. She lived at the beach in San Diego like I used to, she investigated insurance fraud like I did, and she was getting her first murder case (that part was fiction). I even wrote a short story version of the first Madison adventure as my honor’s thesis.

I made the doctors wait until after graduation to do the breast cancer surgery. While recovering, I decided that life was short, and I needed to follow my dreams: I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I wanted to be an author. As I got my strength back, I began to write the first book in the Madison Kelly series. I got my query letter, the first ten pages of the novel, and the dreaded synopsis edited by the amazing Kristen Weber Editorial Services. I began sending queries, and every time I got a rejection I sent out two more. Right away I got partial and full requests, and on the 50th day after the first query had been sent, I signed with my incredible agent Abby Saul of Lark Words. Time to go on submission!

And then the rejections came. My God, it was brutal. The hardest part was how long it took. If I had gotten twenty-five rejections in a few months, I think it would’ve been easier. But a year and a half was a long time to be full of angst and to suffer blow after blow. And then it was over. Brutal.

I had another health challenge pop up around this time, which added insult to injury. I dealt with that for about a year, during which I watched other authors get agents and then book deals, while I sat on the sidelines defeated and unwell. If you’re going through this right now, believe me, I have been there. I recommend Barbara Poelle’s book “Funny You Should Ask,” which has great publishing advice, some serious and some humorous, such as how to deal with a friend’s book hitting the bestseller lists (it involves sending a text with well wishes, and then privately backing over said book with your car; oh I laughed and laughed at that). Also, Janet Reid’s blog is required reading for anyone in this business.

Finally, I decided enough was enough. I was not a quitter! There is no substitute for persistence. Yes, I had to give up on that particular plot line, but I didn’t have to give up on my alter ego Madison Kelly, or the eccentric cast of supporting characters, or the valentine to my city of San Diego where the action takes place. I had moved into a new apartment with a separate room for an office, but I had not yet put it together.

So I sat down at my dust-covered desk, surrounded by moving boxes and paintings leaning against the wall, and I wrote. I wrote like a house on fire. I ordered frozen dinners from grocery delivery services, I didn’t do my laundry, I didn’t clean my apartment, and I didn’t speak to friends or family other than to say, “I’m writing.” All I did was write and sleep. And three months later I sent the book to my agent. We edited the book, and then it went out on submission.

And it sold in a week.

A week! Obviously, not all of the publishers to whom we’d submitted had had a chance to read the book. The kickass editor at Crooked Lane Books, Terri Bischoff, read the fastest, and we sold it to her on a preempt (for those who don’t know, that is when a publisher says, “If we give you X, Y, and Z, will you sell us this book right now and not wait for anyone else to finish reading or make an offer?” I said yes.)

The moral of this story, of course, is don’t give up. The plot line from the earlier book wasn’t what the market wanted, and so it didn’t sell. I kept telling myself that publishing is a business; no one is out to get you. In fact, I knew publishers needed good books, so if they weren’t buying mine, it was because they felt they couldn’t sell it. I knew that I couldn’t fault the market. It would be like opening a store and getting mad at the customers because they didn’t want to buy the things in my store. I needed to offer them something they wanted to buy. 

If agents aren’t biting, have an editor look at your submission package. If they’re biting and requesting fulls but then declining to represent you, have an editor look at your book. Persisting doesn’t mean doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, it means figuring out why the book isn’t selling or the agents aren’t biting, fixing that (or writing a different book, like I did), and trying again. Give the customer (agent, publisher) something they want to buy. And don’t give up.

My mystery/thriller, Anonymous, is out now, available wherever books are sold. You can get it on Amazon, but I like to support independent bookstores so I hope you will buy it from your local bookstore. The second book in the Madison Kelly series, Double Take, will be out October 12, 2021.

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Bio: ELIZABETH BRECK is a state of California licensed private investigator. A native Californian, she had read Harriet the Spy twenty times by the time she was nine, so it was no surprise when she grew up to become a PI. She has worked mainly in the field of insurance investigations, making her the real-life version of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone. In 2013, she decided to go back to school, earning a bachelor’s degree in writing, summa cum laude, from the University of California San Diego. Anonymous is her first novel. She lives with a black Labrador named Hubert who is her best friend.

Website: elizabethbreck.com

Twitter: @theblondePI

Instagram: Elizabeth.breck

ANONYMOUS

Madison Kelly, a San Diego private investigator, arrives home to a note stabbed to her front door: Stop investigating me, or I will hunt you down and kill you. The only problem? Madison hasn’t been investigating anyone―she’s been taking time off to figure out what to do with her life. But how does she prove a negative? The only way to remove the threat is to do exactly what Anonymous, the note writer, is telling her not to do: investigate to see who left it. Could this have something to do with the true-crime podcast she’s been tweeting about and the missing girls?

The girls went missing two years apart, after a night at the clubs in San Diego’s famed Gaslamp Quarter, and Madison had been probing the internet for clues. She discovers that someone has been one step ahead of her, monitoring her tweets to prevent her from getting too close. Soon Madison’s investigation brings up more questions than answers: are the disappearances connected?

Are the girls dead or did they just walk away from their lives? And who is Anonymous, the person who will stop at nothing to keep Madison from learning the truth?As she closes in, so does Anonymous. Set against a backdrop of surfer culture and coffee houses in San Diego, Anonymous follows Madison as she confronts the reality of the girls’ disappearance in a terrifying climax where the hunter becomes the hunted―and Madison is running for her life.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips