Well, not an agent's rejection....

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IReidandWrite

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I was told that my novel didn't have a snowball's chance in....ya know... of getting published.

Had I not been overangered by a comment about my hydrocephalus (people thought I was putting them on), I would have said some things that would have gotten me banned on that message board.

It's been 2-4 days and I still have the urge to knock this guy's teeth out.

How do I deal with it?
 

Soccer Mom

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Finish the book. Find an agent. Get it published. Gloat. Repeat as needed :)
 

davids

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Success is the best form of revenge dear heart

Perhaps it might assuage your beating heart to determine if this person is worth considering as a valid source of criticism-is this person a well know and respected author or just another hack who aint got a damn clue-have some fun with it-that is all
 

MidnightMuse

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First, listen to all the Davids -- it's about perspective, and if the person who made the comment is an idiot, then keep that in perspective.

Second, listen to Soccor Mom and finish the story, edit it well, send it out and get your revenge.

Third, promise me you'll be nice to your Mother for the rest of this week!
 

alleycat

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Knock his teeth out . . .

Just kidding! Davids and MM have given you good advice. You'll get a lot of negative comments in your life; some of them deserved, and some of them not. Just do your best and then worry about doing it better next time.
 

Jamesaritchie

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nachonaco_Grippers said:
I was told that my novel didn't have a snowball's chance in....ya know... of getting published.

Had I not been overangered by a comment about my hydrocephalus (people thought I was putting them on), I would have said some things that would have gotten me banned on that message board.

It's been 2-4 days and I still have the urge to knock this guy's teeth out.

How do I deal with it?

Well, at least nine out of ten novels don't have a snowball's chance in you know where of getting published. But getting mad about it isn't going to help.

All you can do is try your best to find an agent who will find a publisher and prove the guy wrong.

But writing an unpublishable novel is not a sin, and most wirters have to write three or four or five before writing one good enough to be published.
 

Celia Cyanide

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NG, this one may be published, but if this one doesn't work out for you, write another.

This won't be the first time you'll hear that your writing is not good enough. We all do. Just write more, work harder, and forget about it.
 

JanDarby

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The only novel that can be said, with certainty, to be unpublishable is one that's never written.

Keep writing.

JD
 

Jamesaritchie

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JanDarby said:
The only novel that can be said, with certainty, to be unpublishable is one that's never written.

Keep writing.

JD

No, about 90% of what lands in slush piles can also be said, with absolute certainty, to be unpublishable. About half of what lands in slush piles is not only unpublishable, but absolutely, without a doubt, dead-certain unreadable, let alone publishable. And that's being kind. The true number is probably closer to 70% that fit the completely unreadable, unpublishable bill.

Pretty close to 100% of all novels published come from the top 5% of slush, be it agent or editor slush. The bottom 90% stand almost zero chance, and the bottom 50-70% are all completely unpublisheble, and would remain so if God Himself worked on them for a hundred years. They'r enot only unpublishable, they can't be rewritten or revised to make them publishable.

There's no way of telling whether or not a novel is publishable before it's written, but it's dead easy to tell whether most are publishable after they're written.

It would be nice if all novels were good enough to stand at least an outside chance, but they simply are not. There's a reason only 1-3% of all written novels find a home, and it's not because publishers reject good novels. It's because the rarest thing in the world is probably a novel that's good enough to publish. On rare occasion, a good novel will slip through the cracks, but even being kind, 90% of what an agent or editor sees is simply not good to publish.
 

Pomegranate

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You can never go wrong taking the high road.

In this case the high road is to:
(a) Listen to soccer mom and jan darby. keep writing!
(b) Forgive your ignorant friend for hurting your feelings and move on.

There will inevitably be rejections, bad reviews, and critisism in your writing life. It's part of the game. Some of the negatives will be tactful and useful. Some of them will be hurtful and stupid. The only thing you can do is tough it out, trust your gut, learn from the critisism that is constructive, ignore the meanspirited stuff, and keep writing.
 

popmuze

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Jamesaritchie said:
No, about 90% of what lands in slush piles can also be said, with absolute certainty, to be unpublishable. About half of what lands in slush piles is not only unpublishable, but absolutely, without a doubt, dead-certain unreadable, let alone publishable. And that's being kind. The true number is probably closer to 70% that fit the completely unreadable, unpublishable bill.

Pretty close to 100% of all novels published come from the top 5% of slush, be it agent or editor slush. The bottom 90% stand almost zero chance, and the bottom 50-70% are all completely unpublisheble, and would remain so if God Himself worked on them for a hundred years. They'r enot only unpublishable, they can't be rewritten or revised to make them publishable.

There's no way of telling whether or not a novel is publishable before it's written, but it's dead easy to tell whether most are publishable after they're written.

It would be nice if all novels were good enough to stand at least an outside chance, but they simply are not. There's a reason only 1-3% of all written novels find a home, and it's not because publishers reject good novels. It's because the rarest thing in the world is probably a novel that's good enough to publish. On rare occasion, a good novel will slip through the cracks, but even being kind, 90% of what an agent or editor sees is simply not good to publish.


So, matching this up with a previous statement of yours which went something like "the biggest reason your novel won't get published is because you give up on it too soon..." how can you tell if the novel you're currently sending around to agents belongs in that rarefied 1%.
Intuition?
Lots of detailed rejection letters?
Glowing comments from beta readers, teachers and friends?
More and more interest with each revision?

Conversely, can you get the idea it's going to fall somewhat short by the lack of requests for full manuscripts from agents?
Twenty out of twenty form rejections?
Critical comments from readers and friends?
Each revision seems to make things worse
 

Jamesaritchie

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popmuze said:
So, matching this up with a previous statement of yours which went something like "the biggest reason your novel won't get published is because you give up on it too soon..." how can you tell if the novel you're currently sending around to agents belongs in that rarefied 1%.
Intuition?
Lots of detailed rejection letters?
Glowing comments from beta readers, teachers and friends?
More and more interest with each revision?

Conversely, can you get the idea it's going to fall somewhat short by the lack of requests for full manuscripts from agents?
Twenty out of twenty form rejections?
Critical comments from readers and friends?
Each revision seems to make things worse

The biggest reason your novel won't get published is because it isn't good enough. This is far and away the most common reason novels never find a home. But the number one reason good novels don't find a home is because the writer gives up too soon.

The only real way to the whther your novel fits in the one percent or so that can make the cut is to keep submitting it as long as you can find anyone to look at it. Beta readers, friends, and techers mean zip. They might point out something you can change for the better here and there, but nothing means less where good/publishable is concerned that the opinion of beta readers, friends, and teachers.

Writers are usually lousy judges of their own work, and most other epople are any better at judging actual publishing quality. So send it out, and keep sending it out, until there's not a single place left to send it.

But another leading cause of a writer not getting published is allowing a first novel to get in the way of a second, a third, and a fourth novel. You should send a first novel out, and keep sending it out forever, but you should never expect it to sell, and you sure shouldn't have so much faith in it that you spend time and effort and money self-publishing it, rather than working as hard as possible on a second, a third, and a fourth novel.

It is just strange, to say the least, how many writers expect a first effort to be in the top one percent. How many painters do you know who would expect their first painting to be good enough to hang in a gallery? How many musicians do you know who would expect to be in teh top one percent the first time they made it all the way through a piece of music without an error? Yet writers expect a first novel to be better than 99% of everything out there.

Sometimes first novels do sell, but it's extremely rare, and for each first novel good enough to sell, somewhere around a thousand aren't good enough. Very few novels that make the cut are first novels. They're novels written by pro writers with a lot of other novels behind them, or they're the second, third, fourth, or fifth novel the writer has written. And when a true first novel does make the cut, it's very often from a writer who has some serious credits and other writing experience behind him.

But the only possible way to know is really to submit and keep submitting until there's not a place left to submit. Well, there is anotehr way to know, and that's to find a pro editor or writer in your genre who will look at it and hinestly tell you it stinks on ice. But you probably won't believe him, so submitting is the best way to get a real answer.

And while the submitting is going on you can't obsess about the first novel, you can't stress over it, etc. Odds are extreley high it's not good enough to make the cut, or to come anywhere near making the cut. So what? It's a first effort. What do you expect?

So you concentrate on writing a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth novel. If you have any talent, you'll get better with each novel, and one of them will sell.
 

Celia Cyanide

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Jamesaritchie said:
Beta readers, friends, and techers mean zip. They might point out something you can change for the better here and there, but nothing means less where good/publishable is concerned that the opinion of beta readers, friends, and teachers....Writers are usually lousy judges of their own work, and most other epople are any better at judging actual publishing quality. So send it out, and keep sending it out, until there's not a single place left to send it.

So am I to assume from that by "most other people" you mean only "agents and editors"?
 

Jamesaritchie

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Celia Cyanide said:
So am I to assume from that by "most other people" you mean only "agents and editors"?

I mean the only person in the world who can say with absolute certainty that a novel is publishable is the publisher who buys it.

Good agents, editors, and pro writers can tell you that a novel is probably publishable, or is so bad there's no hope of having it published.

Friends and family and most critique groups haven't a clue. They can only tell you what they like or don't like. To get any real meaning from friends, family and critiqjue groups you would need to have your novel read by a minimum of 500 people, 70% of whom would have to say they'd be willing to buy it, should it be published.

Not that some people and some critique groups aren'thelpful in point out things you overlooked, or silly mistakes you made, but they can't begin to tell you whether a novel really is publishable.

The writers in trouble are those who fall a couple of percentage points below the cut line. It's easy to say the bottom 70% stand no chance at all. They're just miserably bad in every possible way. It's not much harder to cull the 20% above that.

But there are quite a few novels that are just below the top one or two percent, and these are the one that almost make it, but never quite get over the hump. These are the ones that a lot of people, including agents and editors like, but just not quite enough. These are teh heartbreakers.

Then there are the novels that are good enough to publish somewhere, but they aren't in that top 1%, or they're so radically different that no one quite knows what to do with them, or no one quite knows how to market them. They can bum around for quite a while before finding a home.

Again, it's usually very easy to say a horrible novel is not publishable, but only the publisher who buys a novel can say with absolute certainty that it is publishable. Many a novel is pretty good, just not quite good enough.
 

smallthunder

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A slight modification of the motto

davids said:
Success is the best form of revenge dear heart

I'm not disagreeing with you, dearheart, but I do tend to go with the more general: "Living Well Is The Best Revenge."

So, even if you do not succeed in publishing that novel -- if you enjoyed writing it, worked hard on it, and are proud of it -- that's living well.
 

popmuze

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Jamesaritchie said:
The writers in trouble are those who fall a couple of percentage points below the cut line. There are quite a few novels that are just below the top one or two percent, and these are the one that almost make it, but never quite get over the hump. These are the ones that a lot of people, including agents and editors like, but just not quite enough. These are teh heartbreakers.

Then there are the novels that are good enough to publish somewhere, but they aren't in that top 1%, or they're so radically different that no one quite knows what to do with them, or no one quite knows how to market them. They can bum around for quite a while before finding a home.quote]

Having had three novels published and four or five unpublished, I'm lingering in that gray area with my new one. Without a big track record behind me, I'm thinking of going to an alias to get this one over the hump. In the meantime, with agent suggestions and the editorial guidance I've gotten here and elsewhere, I've greatly improved my chances that someone will take it on, even if it doesn't have best seller written all over it.
The idea of starting on a new one fills me with dread, however.
 

IReidandWrite

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There is some logic flaw in that, because new authors are seen quite a bit.

Or is 1% BIGGER than I'm thinking?
 

Soccer Mom

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What James is saying is don't be too upset if this novel isn't quite good enough for publication. Just because this novel is rejected, doesn't mean the next one will be. Keep writing and working hard and you can get over that hump.

If you stop writing, it guarantees you won't be an author. I'll put it in terms I know you'll get. Think of this as your off-Broadway apprenticeship. Nobody starts out with a starring role in a major production. (Okay, maybe Daisy Eagan, but that is soooo rare.) It takes time and real effort to get the lead in a major.

Ignore the naysayer if he is hurtful or ugly. Hone your craft. Write. Improve. Publish. And Muse is right. Be nice to your mother. Goodness is repaid. Let me know how auditions go for HSM.
 

Jamesaritchie

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nachonaco_Grippers said:
There is some logic flaw in that, because new authors are seen quite a bit.

Or is 1% BIGGER than I'm thinking?

Two things.

New authors are pretty rarely in the overall picture. Especially outside the romance genre. And just because an author is new does not in any way mean you're seeing the first novel that writer wrote. What you're seeing is simply the first one that writer managed to sell.

Carrie, for instance, wasn't King's first novel, it was his fourth or fifth. It was just the first one he managed to sell.

But one percent is apretty big number. One percent of six million is 60,000, so the one percent number isn't really accurate. The percentage should be somewhat smaller, but one percent is close enough.
 
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