Dec. 16, 2002
There’s nothing like a two mile walk home from the post office in the pouring, windy rain to make you miserable. Wait, there is – carrying a rejection letter from your publisher of choice during said walk.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have hit me so hard if I had been prepared for it. I truly believed that this publisher would publish my book for several reasons. They publish books like mine, they publish first time authors, I had an inside connection and (I thought) my proposal rocked.
What stung the most was that it wasn’t an out and out rejection; they liked my work – even holding an acquisitions meeting about it. The publisher thought I wrote well, liked the idea, and he even wrote me a personal note back saying that my submission had gone further than most. The ultimate decision to not publish it came down to judgment calls based on the fact they didn’t think the book idea had formed completely nor were they sure of the size of audience it would have.
I had come so close, but not close enough which left me more devastated than a simple “We just didn’t like it” would have.
This rejection left me debating if I should continue on or not with the book idea- maybe all the opinions from “professionals” hold more validity than my dream. On the other hand, there is this fearsome power inside me that wants to prove them all wrong by sending them a copy of my published book with a note saying “I told you so.” Is that arrogance or lost hope? At this point, I’m not sure.
Julie Andrews has perfect advice for a situation like this: “You cry a little and then the sun comes out.” Perhaps I’ll wallow a little, indulge my sadness and wallow a little and then give it another go.
I’ll do more market research (an area I knew I was weak on), I give them a clear, concise book (also something I lacked with my proposal) and just write more, finish it and polish it until it shines. Why? Because at this point in my life, I’ve blown any chances to go back to being a how I was.
Postscript:
I couldn’t wallow, I just couldn’t. I had a cry on the way home from the post and that was enough. If I didn’t believe in what I was doing, if I didn’t believe there was a market, I think I would have given up long ago. But it’s like with any personal dream – it’s inside you and you feel it every day. It never goes away until it’s fulfilled. If I gave up, that would be the real failure – not being rejected from a publisher. To help me focus on what to do next, I set up a poll for readers to help answer my marketing questions. This is to prove to the right people that there is a market and that somehow, this story that I’ve told is relevant in today’s publishing world.
Also, I spent most of the afternoon and evening working on my book and answering the questions that the publisher had. I’m going to redo it all (even rebinding the book thanks to my best-friend Emily) and send it back to the publisher. I feel like their rejection was a passive invitation. The worst that could happen was that they would say no again and since I’ve already been through it once, the second time around should be a piece of cake.
I’m going to use the rejection as a motivator instead of a debilitator. Somehow, it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.