“This Is How It Goes.”

Allow me to set the scene – You recently completed writing the most difficult story of your career. You pulled it off! Your exhaustive research came through. The ending poured out of you like liquid diamonds. You redid the ending of your last novel a dozen times. This time, it felt like the story was saying, “Here it is. Take it. You’ve earned it.” You do another draft. The ending doesn’t change at all.

You submit the manuscript to your beta readers – more knowledgeable and successful than you’ve ever had access to before – and you set to chewing down your finger nails.

You question what you were thinking when you wrote it. It was too ambitious! Why, oh, why can’t you ever just write what you already know how to do? Who are you to invent some new story structure that no one has ever seen before? You are now going to be humiliated in front of the most knowledgeable and successful beta readers you’ve ever had. You need to throw up.

Your messenger app pings. “More later, but looooove it. Best thing you’ve ever written.” You can’t breathe. Every beta says the same thing – they love it. You signal your agent as to what is coming and how well received it’s been. She is stamping her feet, she’s so excited. Sweet Lord in heaven.

As if you could possibly get any happier, a trusted friend who knows you well at your personal tenet and thematic level, asks you to coffee. A coffee date during which she actually cries from the impact your story had on her. You cry too. With gratitude. With pride. You are flying now. It might actually happen. Dreams do happen. Why not yours? Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh… You send it to Super Agent and wait. Nerves again, but everyone assures you that she will love it. Days turn into weeks.

Computer pings. “Can we talk?”

Your stomach drops.

You talk. She decidedly does not love it.

You, stammering: But, but, but… I thought it was the best thing I’ve ever written.

Super Agent, matter-of-factly: It may be, but it won’t sell like this.

The sounds you just heard were my dreams and confidence being blown to bits.

Super Agent’s opinion – and she was right – was that I needed to do a major rewrite. The story concept was strong, but the story structure didn’t work at all. She said that she knew the audiences the editors who are interested in me are selling to, and the manuscript as I wrote it wouldn’t be a good fit. In publishing, not being “a good fit” is a death sentence.

You, shakily: But what about the betas, they liked it a lot.

Super Agent, calmly: Betas know writing. Agents know the market.

I’m going to be honest with you. This was a very dark day. My lips and hands trembled. For weeks, my breathing would be shallow and intermittent. I was overwrought with guilt. I had sacrificed, my friends and whole family had sacrificed, so much. For nothing. More than anything, I was humiliated. I was sorry too for wasting her time. I tortured myself with the questions of whether she regretted signing me, how many more chances I’d get before she let me go.

It was a Thursday. By Monday, I had pulled myself together. This is not because I’m some kind of hero. I’m not. But what choice did I have? There are only two: leaving it wrong or making it right.* I love my story and my characters. I have big dreams for my career. Super Agent was right on every count. There was only one thing I could do. Write it again. I wrote her an email thanking her.

Then I dedicated myself to taking my magnum opus apart, scene by scene, word by word. It was excruciating, but that wasn’t the only problem. Firstly, I had no idea how to put it back together any better than before. Cue the panic. Secondly, my heart was still in pieces. A sword of pain still protruded from my belly. Hanging in front of my eyes was a shroud of fear. Humiliation had a vise-grip on my chest.

Sometime later, still trudging along, I found myself talking to a writer-friend who happens to be an award-winning, bestselling author about a band when I abruptly spilled to her what had happened and how I felt. That’s what you always do when you’re embarrassed, right? Tell people you admire about your own shame. [Palm smacks forehead.]

That is when I heard the words that put me back together. She said to me, “This is how it goes.”

This friend who happens to be one of the most IQ-wise intelligent people I know and the writer of sentences and stories I can only aspire then shared with me her own experience. Her agent had said the same things to her. I can’t sell this. No one can sell this. Change it or write something else. Not just once.

Wait. What? This misery, this failure, this humiliating rejection… This is how it goes? I can be a talented writer, a born-to-be writer, a writer with a big future, and this overwhelming disgrace can still have happened to me?

Yes.

It happens all the time. Bad reviews and rejection do not mean that you aren’t innately talented enough or that you won’t be able to get your work to be what it needs to be.

I went back to Super Agent and apologized for being so awestruck and humiliated by her response to my manuscript. I knew I had taken risks in my attempt to do something ambitious. When I sent it to her, I’d said, “I tried some things. Tell me which ones don’t work.” But while I waited for her call, I’d forgotten my own words. I told Super Agent what my friend had said and she laughed. “MM, yes! This is the way it goes.” She went on to tell me the faith she has in me and the excitement for my story. Healing, healing, blood refilling my heart.

Since then I have heard countless stories about other well-published, successful authors, names you know, who’ve edited their books with their agents before they were even signed for months or even years. And then there are the writers whose books were bought as complete and then so deeply critiqued by the purchasing editor the authors essentially had to rewrite them.

So, when you get bad feedback, know what I didn’t: You are on a well-worn path, worn in first not just by wannabes but by the very best of us. This is the way to get where we’re going. When there are only two choices, chose a third – faith in yourself, like everyone successful before you.

With regard to the manuscript rebuild and the question of how-to, this is what worked for me:

• Read and study comparable titles
• Participate in a developmental workshop
• Choose a single craft book and put your story through it

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

~ Pablo Picasso

See you on the path!

* There is also the very valid option of walking away from a story which every experienced writer has done at one time or another, but I will leave that to another article.

—

MM Finck writes women’s book club fiction and is represented by the wisest of Super Agents, Katie Shea Boutillier of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York City. You can visit MM’s website http://www.mmfinck.com to learn more about her and her novels. She is also active on facebook http://www.facebook.com/mmfinck and twitter http://www.twitter.com/mmfinck. Reach out. It would make her day. Mention WWWB!

 

Tags: featured, inspiration, rejection, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing