What keeps most authors writing after receiving multiple rejections?
Last year, I completed a heavily researched 95,000-word novel about an emerging pandemic that targets primarily children. I am a former scientist and current nurse and wanted to do teaching about what to expect if a serious pandemic emerges.
My novel leans heavily on actual historical incidences and LOTS of realistic action by multiple agencies: military, epidemiologists, politicians and, of course, average people caught up in quarantine. It also has many exotic locations as outbreak clusters are carried by unwitting healthcare workers.
I have submitted it to over 500 publishers and agents without success and rewritten it twice to tone down much of the science, yet even my few beta readers don't bother to give comments in exchange for my copious suggestions about their own work. I have an editor friend with a science background who tells me there is nothing wrong with my writing. She also has no problem with how I weave actual science into a realistic plot.
So, what exactly is my problem? It may be that I have a similar issue as Richard Preston's Hot Zone or Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague, very didactic even though it is an action adventure. So, just rewrite the story some suggest. But that removes the very purpose of my writing, to teach about the real science and medicine that will occur during a pandemic.
I am well on my way into the second novel but after so many rejections, I question whether it is worth the effort to write a trilogy that obviously has little general appeal. I took a six-month break from writing and wish to return to my series even though I am sure it may never be published.
Above all else, I am an educator and only wish to offer readers a realistic portrayal of how containment of a deadly pandemic will be botched by world health agencies.
What is worse than a rejection of a manuscript? It may be apathy. For, if no one responds to your query, you do not even get suggestions about what to improve or where to edit?
I am just curious what keeps most writers writing, after multiple rejections?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/40789. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
3 answers
You are accessing this answer with a direct link, so it's being shown above all other answers regardless of its score. You can return to the normal view.
Welcome to the world of writers. That isn't sarcasm, by the way, that's truth.
Let me tell you about my own tale, with a novel (series) called Altar of Warlords. This story has gone through a dozen major revisions, is being turned down right and left, and when I FINALLY have an agent that requests a full manuscript for her approval I'm so caught off-guard that I'm mid draft and the whole thing is a hot mess because of it.
Now, let me say that I have a nursing background, but not necessarily science (other than the obvious ties through nursing). Before nursing I was in management and IT projects (predominantly system analysis and system design). So a lot of my work reflects this, and I can make actual coding in-story look like a programmer wrote it (surprise, surprise). All the while making a death scene look like an actual death scene (not the Hollywood crap where you get stabbed in the heart and die twenty minutes later, after having relayed the plot relevant message behind the guise of plot-armour).
And yet, Altar of Warlords is turned down right, left and centre (as the saying goes). So why do I keep at it? Because I'm a writer. I have something interesting to say, I have lessons to teach, I have a story to tell.
So I will just keep on swinging until I knock it outta the park. I will keep improving my story, and I will keep improving my writing until I get that lucky swing and get an agent that will represent me.
Because I've heard stories of people getting an agent only after a decade of trying. I've heard stories of people choosing self-publishing because agents 'just don't see my genius'. There are options. But if the option you pick is traditional publishing, via an agent, and all that jazz? Then buckle up. You're now competing with the best for the limited seats available.
Riddle me this: Are you a writer? If you are, then you'll keep writing. Because that's kind of our shtick; to write.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40790. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
0 comment threads
What keeps writers writing is the utter impossibility of not writing. Tolkien had no hope of ever publishing The Silmarillion, yet he kept writing and rewriting and editing and re-editing it throughout his life. Keats was receiving negative reviews, yet he didn't quit writing and turn to medicine, though he had the education for it. Writing is a fire in one's bones - it cannot be resisted. You write because you write.
Jim Butcher, a successful modern writer with three book series to his name. He recounts how he wrote three novels, all of them not good enough. Then he wrote the one that was good enough, and spent three years sending it to agents, chasing agents, etc. Some rejected him. Some just ignored him. Then, finally, he got it published. That became the first novel of the Dresden Files series. (Source)
That is a normal process. You get rejected, again and again. It's extremely rare for an author to have their first novel published. It takes time before you acquire the skill to write a story that's really good. Then, when you've written that story, that is objectively not bad, it takes a combination of skill, luck, and a bit of chutzpah to attract the attention of an agent.
The only thing that can keep one going through all that is a passion for writing so strong, that it drowns out the disappointments, a passion that's stronger than all the rejections. You keep creating because you must create.
0 comment threads
I suggest you find, buy and read the book "Get a Literary Agent" by Chuck Sambuchino; (on Amazon or Barnes & Noble) it is a good start and also a good antidote to much online advice. If your queries are not getting answered, there is something wrong with your query. Not necessarily something wrong with your book.
That said, it sounds to me like you wrote for the wrong reason, at least the wrong reason to get sold. That may come through in your query, as well. Agents want non-fiction if you are teaching, and only take fiction that is entertaining, because entertainment value is what sells books and (perhaps) movie tickets.
If you are pitching your book as a wake-up-call, agents will turn you down immediately. And if you have queried 500 agents, you shouldn't query them again.
No matter what your motivation for writing, you must pitch your book as an entertainment and nothing else, with a plot. Don't tell the agent how much you researched it, they don't care. You get about 3 lines for your bio, in which you can mention your qualifications to write such a story, that will help sell it and tell the agent you probably haven't made any ridiculous mistakes.
Your query letter text is 85% relating the plot (with a couple lines for setting if needed) and something about one or two main characters: a setup, the Act I inciting incident, the first complication, that's it! You don't reveal the ending or what else happens. This is much like jacket copy; it is a teaser to see if the agent wants to read further.
Sell your book as a story (and if need be rewrite to BE a story). All the research is "backstage", your plot and character actions should stay true to the research, but you put as little as possible into the book; you should only detail elements that directly influence the plot or actions or complications.
Do not query very many agents at once. Query 10, if you get no responses, work on your query again. Personalize the query to the agent.
Get the book and learn how to do it right!
0 comment threads
0 comment threads