Inspiration

The cats woke me up at four a.m. this morning, and by six I was ready to give up trying to get back to sleep. Grabbing my iPad I went through my email only to find a rejection from on of the agents I'd applied to the day before.

Always a lovely way to start the day! I do appreciate the ones who get back to me quickly, but it can wear you down.

A few hours later I'd licked my wounds, had breakfast, fed the cats, and done the housework before checking my email again to find a blog post containing the following:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On!’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” | Calvin Coolidge

So  I went online and responded to a weekly contest challenge. This one was to write a story where every paragraph started with the same first sentence. It my case, it was about the massive confusion I experience when someone in England asks me to tea.

It's unlikely to win the contest, they get 300+ entries every week at $5 a pop (nice work if you can get it!), but it's a win for me, because I'm still writing, I'm still mostly enjoying it, and I'm still trying to get my work out to the world, something I've wanted to do for such a very long time. Not for the money, or the fame (although both would be nice), but because I think people might enjoy my stories. It's worth it just to make one person laugh when they wouldn't have otherwise.

So thank you, Calvin, for that little bit of inspiration when it was needed (and to Mr. Rohan's blog containing it). If you hadn't written that, my day would have bit that little bit darker.

Dealing With Rejection

 I have lived a charmed life, there’s no doubt about it. I lost a job once because I wouldn’t date the owner’s son. But that’s the only one, and frankly I was well out of it. All other leavings have been by choice. 

I have been able to do well in school. Maybe not the best schools, we weren’t anything close to wealthy, but I was blessed to be able to learn as I wanted.

And I have never had to worry about a having a roof over my head, enough to eat, or some5ing to wear. Well, except for those trousers with the monkey patch in them, which I hated but had to wear because my mother didn’t believe in discarding clothes with holes in them. Oh, the trauma.

OK, there were people I liked who didn’t like me back. And I wasn’t great at sports, so there was some losing there.

The difference with my situation now is that I’ve always thought I could write. And been told I could by friends, family, teachers. I have been surprised at how satisfying it has been to do so, as well, and by how much my imagination has come to life as part of the process.

And yet, three agents have so far rejected my book, and I have even scored an honourable mention in the four short story contests I’ve entered.

My head knows this is far from unusual. Great writers from Lewis to King have had to deal with scores of rejections before getting published, and I bookmark some of the many sites documenting this to remind me, like https://www.creativewritingnews.com/list-of-best-selling-authors-that-were-once-rejected-by-publishers/. There are also the many stories from agents and publishers about the many thousands of books they get sent every month, so you can’t really blame them if they occasionally overlook the genius that is my cozy mystery. ;)

But as we all acknowledge in our writing group, that doesn’t really remove the sting. So how best to deal?

This is part of my learning experience now, part of being an author. I’m finding that I can go away from it for a day, lick my wounds a bit, and bounce back fairly strong. And I keep one goal firmly front and centre: keep writing. Persistence is everything in this career, and the advantage of starting it so late in life is that I have the time and maturity to dedicate to it.

It’s a challenge to find love, but most of us manage to do that. It’s an even bigger challenge to find a publisher, but there are thousands out there, and I ain’t done yet. My match made in literary heaven will happen, wait and see.

Good Habits

Had a great writers group meeting yesterday with guest author Sue Woolley, in which we talked about how to ensure your writing had the space and air to breathe. Suggestions such as setting aside specific writing time, ensuring you have a space where there is minimal disruption, and always having a notebook with you to write down ideas. All of which I do. In addition, I have my own little ritual to separate my writing day, which involves making myself a skinny chai, putting on a scarf for warmth during these colder days, and creating a list of the writing-related things I need to do, such as keeping up on my writing magazines or reviewing previous writing.

The inspiration fairy, as Sue called it (I prefer to have an inspiration god who looks amazingly like Tom Hiddleston) can only do so much. But if you set up the time and space and then open your mind to what comes, I find I’m amazed by the result. I wasn’t sure it would be that way, that my characters would live, but they do, and darned if they don’t often wake me in the middle of the night to let me know they’ve got new ideas about what should happen.

How wonderful that I finally get to experience this, and I’m so grateful to have the chance.

The Wait

Everything is busy when you’re working on the first and second drafts of your novel. All else has to fit in around it.

Then you are absorbed in the mechanics of getting an agent and publisher, maybe working on submitting short stories to pump up your new writer resume.

But after that comes the wait. You redo your query letter and submit to a few more agents. You run another spell and grammar check in the novel, and find bits you aren’t quite happy with, so you make them better. Then you worry you shouldn’t have submitted so soon, maybe it wasn’t done.

I’m finding the key to this period is to be disciplined and keep on writing new material. I have to trust that a potential agent will see potential even if everything isn’t perfect. Because an agent who wants me to be perfect is going to be sadly disappointed at some point anyway. And let’s face it: your novel is never done.

I’m also finding that this is the time to remind myself that there is a world out there. I can actually go see a film, go out to lunch, see friends, finish watching Dead To Me. It’s all fodder for future work as well as enjoyable.

You can’t go backwards. You can’t let your novel become your tyrant.

Onward ho! (The ho is not me.)