Forms of Rejection

MorganMarshall said:

Hm. I always thought that if you write, you WERE born to do it. I mean, why else go through all this hell unless you have to? LOL

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Anybody here like HammerFall?

Pick up your pens this night
jot down 1k words an hour
ERASING is not allowed
'Till the final draft's time to go

A novel wrote written in ink
(I think my cartridge needs changing)
How long should the synopsis be?
Rejections! (I think they're all form)

Strunk and White says
dependeant clauses hanging off my sentences!
Must be tight
then you see
that you are
BORN TO WRITE! (WRITE!)

WE WERE BORN TO WRITE!

\m/

Writers have to be nice to me, because I can give them press (well, those writers who aren't too rich and famous to care). But most of them seem like they'd be friendly anyway. The condescension I've encountered is mainly from people who seem insecure about their own positions, and most of those weren't regular writers, but academics I interacted with back when I was a non tenured academic.

Academia is a scary place, because there's so much competition for a few exceedingly cushy lifetime positions. I'm guessing it's like that in creative writing programs. But outside academia, the writers I've met tend not to have an inflated sense of self-importance (and not all academics do, either). They tend to have experienced rejections and bad sales and have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

I have known writers who will get very distant if they think you might ask them for an agent referral or special consideration at the journal they edit, and they don't want to offer those things. It's not a pleasant situation on either side, but I realize there are tons of people who see every published writer as their "connection" and route to publication and will bug that writer mercilessly. So the writer may have learned to stay distant till he or she is sure you aren't just angling for a favor.

As a teacher, I spend a lot of my time coaching kids on how to communicate. I have several students with autism/Asperger's, others with speech impediments, still others from different cultures. It's amazing to me how much conflict comes from the failure to communicate.

For example, one boy tells another boy that his shoes are strange. To Boy #1, it was an observation--your shoes are different from mine. To Boy #2, it was a put-down--your shoes aren't as good as mine. Now both of them have hurt feelings, though neither one ever intended any harm to the other.

But at least they had me there to help them work it out. As adults, we don't always have that neutral party who can see how the communication breakdown happened. All we can do is take a deep breath and see if we can move past it.

MsJudy said:

As adults, we don't always have that neutral party who can see how the communication breakdown happened. All we can do is take a deep breath and see if we can move past it.

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And as writers, in fact, it's imperative that we do communicate cleanly. In the interests of which I'm going to say - Morgan, you keep forgiving people who disagree with you, while refusing to see that there is a common point that keeps being made with regard to your posts: it's very rude of you to be so dismissive of other writers and to be so disrespectful of people working in the publishing industry. Continually stirring up arguments of self vs trade publishing is unattractive behaviour on a board where the only rule is Respect Your Fellow Writer. Venting is one thing - talking about the disappointment of rejection is healthy and supported: but if everyone who got a rejection came in here to mouth off about the industry, AW would be a very different place - and a much less useful one.

Wishing you luck as always with your book, but asking you nicely again to please stop with the blanket insults.

ETA: I thought hard about taking this to PM again, but I think it's useful info for other site-newbies. Many of the people on the board are trade published and probably don't care much for the veiled insults about having only matched cookie-cutter expectations: but more importantly, many others are professionals in the publishing industry - giving their time to help (often-new) writers. They deserve gratitude rather than put-downs.

Words are imperfect symbols.

Our thoughts and emotions--they don't originate in words. They get expressed that way, in our heads first, and then translated from the mess of our heads to our mouths or our fingers, where it's translated again with the use of the words, the inflections, the facial expressions.

In writing, there are no inflections and facial expressions, which puts an immense onus on the words--to mean what they're supposed to with the correct nuance.

Words, as other people see them, are a translation of a translation. And once they've been translated out, they then have to get translated in: the other person's perceptions, from how they heard the words to their relationship with the person to their past experiences with the subject to their emotional state to how their thoughts are colored by their whole lives--those are also going to translate the words back into the listener's brain. And too often, the message that gets picked up is not the same as the original thought or feeling.

I have seen so many arguments and screaming matches and flung-about hatred over simple misinterpretation...

Once someone says something, it's your job to interpret it. And, often, there's more than one way of doing it. If someone says "you need to do more research" I could interpret that as "you're stupid " or "you're lazy " or "how dare you come into my office stinking of such ignorance" or "why are you still here, you're wasting my time, you're horrible at everything and you should just quit right now", or I could interpret that as "there's more information on the subject and you should go find it to make this essay more powerful so that I can give you really good grades yaaaayy! " or "you need to do more research ."

Anyway, the point of all this is: Words are symbols, and as such they must be chosen and expressed and interpreted, and so their meanings stand to be grossly misshapen and contorted in the process. I think, absent of any other information, it's usually fairest play to assume the best of other people. There's almost always room for interpretation. I think that it might be good practice to interpret with a lot of margin for error, and to give folks the benefit of the doubt.

That said, though, it's important to watch your words as well, to make sure you're conveying what you want to, and to consider the possible interpretations of what you're saying. We've all had that moment where you said something that you thought was innocuous and find out that you hurt someone...(Maybe. Maybe I'm a terrible person, I dunno....)

There are ways to minimize the risk of miscommunication. Tact, caution, being sensitive to others' feelings. Golden rule, as always Consider others' positions. Put on their shoes and smile on your brother and...and things.

Be courteous, I guess, is the point.

...I'm starting to get really sick of myself So I'mma stop talking now. I hope that's marginally helpful...

buzhidao said:

I think, absent of any other information, it's usually fairest play to assume the best of other people. There's almost always room for interpretation. I think that it might be good practice to interpret with a lot of margin for error, and to give folks the benefit of the doubt.

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This. Don't assume they are being condescending. Assume they are trying to help, even if their comments aren't quite what you expected to hear.

just a note that that quoted piece under my bolded name isn't from me - it's Buzhidao. But I'll get off your case now: I thought it was an important point for new-site visitors to know that dissing the industry is frowned on, but venting disappointment is fine and supported.

To answer the original question - yes I have felt rejected by fellow writers, especially those who have been trade published. The trick is not letting it get to you and learning what to say/what not to say. I'm sure my take is slightly different from others though.

I'm self-published. Mentioning this usually gets two reactions from writers. 1) They think you are brave for taking it on yourself. 2) You might as well have told them you killed their cat. That's one of the risks of self-publishing.

I still have the dream of being published by a publishing company, which is why I go to conventions and conferences. I want to learn! I know that I have to become an even better writer to accomplish this dream. Who better to learn from than the professionals? However, I found out pretty fast that you don't mention being self-published at conventions and stuff. It still has that stigma of "Oh, you weren't good enough to be trade published." In a lot of cases they are correct. If you aren't selling thousands of books, don't mention it. Your self-publishing doesn't exist because if you mention it to one of those people (editors, publishers, or other people with connections) who holds that bad opinion about it, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

On the internet it is common to feel disrespected because you can't "hear" how the person actually means to say something. A lot of times you go on with already hurt feelings and something someone types can be misconstrued. I honestly don't believe anyone tries to be mean. If they are trying to be mean, why do you care? Who are they to you that they can make you feel inferior? You don't have to talk to them. Cut them loose. It's as simple as that.

Back when I was a freshman in college, Yvonne Olson refused to sit next to me in class after our first date. Does that count?

caw