Wednesday 4 February 2009

Positive Rejection

Surprisingly, not all rejection letters are crushingly negative. There is such a thing as a positive rejection letter, and if you are lucky enough to receive one, you should frame it and hang it in your work space to remind you that writing is not futile and to spur you on to greater things.

I’ve once received a great rejection letter from a senior editor at a well known publishing house. How can a rejection letter be ‘great’ you ask, surely only an acceptance is great? Actually, this one was pure gold and I went off to celebrate – let me explain.

This was a personalised letter stating she had read and enjoyed the sample chapters – this is absolute proof my submission made it out of the slush pile. And if I can get out of one slush pile I can get out of others. This confirms my work is in the top 10% of submissions – confirmation I’m not completely wasting my time, which has to be the greatest fear of all novel writers.

Amazingly, this editor took time out from her busy schedule to write a short critique of my sample chapters: what she thought was good and what she thought needed improving. The whole letter was only a few short paragraphs, but how often have you longed for feedback from a professional editor, and a senior one at that? She even took time to read my blog.

What the editor suggested for improvement I had already half suspected before I sent out the submissions, which is great, because it confirmed my gut instinct was right and gave me a focus for the next edit/re-write.

In this lonely writing business it is so easy to get led astray by all the hype and distrust our own instincts. Having received this positive rejection, I now knew my story telling instincts were right all along I could allow myself to listen to them more intently. My next move, of course, was to revisit my sample chapters and edit, edit, edit.