Noel Lynne Figart

Because rejections slips are on my mind, I googled “rejection slips”. Yeah, I know, goofy.

They’re agony for a lot of writers, especially ones who write mostly for the love of their stories and characters and are not looking at writing with an eye to business.

First off, I want this really clear: I consider that sort of writing a totally valid form of art. I eyeroll people who are “writing a book” because they usually say it to try to impress. I can tell the difference between that and, “I’ve got this story I’m writing that I love.” There is a big difference.

But, back to rejection slips.

Why, why, why, is this a huge deal to the person who wants to go pro?

If you wanna go pro, you’re basically saying, “I’m an entrepreneur and my product is my words.”

If you’re going to be in sales, which as a writer who wants to be paid, by God you are, you need to learn some facts about selling:

• Sales is a numbers game. Yes, yes, yes, you have to be an artist to write good fiction. But when the book is done as best as it can be without the editor’s input, you have to take off your artist hat, and put on your salesman’s hat.
• A direct mailout that advertises a niche service that gets four “yeses” to ninety-six “nos” is a good, solid performer. The numbers are a bit better for fiction, but keep in mind most first books, even the classics and the best sellers, get a lot of “no”s before we get to a “yes”.
• Even if you are a writing a mainstream novel, you are writing to a niche market. 25% of respondents to a 2005 Gallup poll did not read any books in the previous year. Another 50% read less than five. (Makes me feel like a bloody freak. I’ve read more than five books in the past month not counting audiobooks). Then keep in mind that a large percentage of those books are the big name best sellers (Harry Potter series, Oprah’s book club…) The market is adequate, but hardly enormous.
• A good salesman doesn’t take a “no” personally. Writing is a business as much as is selling brushes. Oh sure, people in the front lines of the publishing industry (editors, agents, etc.) get into it because they love books¹, but they have to get paid enough to eat somehow!
• If you really do want to be a professional writer, accept the business part of it and learn to sell. There are thousands of books out there about it. Selling isn’t about Leisure Suit Larry nor is it about some guy who wears an Armani suit with a perfect haircut and is slicker than snot on a doorknob. Learning to sell well is about being interested in people. If you’re writing fiction, chances are good you’ve got this down pat. So expand on it.

I’ve read a lot of sites about rejection and dealing with it in the past few months, and I’ve found the ones not aimed at the artiste a lot more useful than the ones aimed specifically at the writer.  Don’t paper your damn bath with your rejection slips.  If you must keep them for tracking purposes, be business-like about it and file the things.  Someone selling telephone systems doesn’t keep a memento of every “no” he gets like a serial killer keeping a tooth from each of his victims.   Don’t you do it!  Be a pro.
¹They don’t get into it for the money! Median annual earnings for salaried editors were $43,890 in May 2004. Okay money, but no-one’s going to encourage their child to marry an editor for the financial security

I got two rejection slips from agents today, for a grand total of three.

Ya know, I was feeling mildly bummed¹ until I counted… Three ain’t bad. I’ve promised myself not to get worried until the count reaches thirty and at two queries a week, that’s months away.

One was a form rejection.

The other was this very kind personal letter, saying (s)he enjoyed reading the pages I submitted, but it didn’t catch the imagination.

Does that mean my missing is getting closer? It’s the first personal response I’ve gotten.

Part of me is thinking, “Aww, that’s really sweet and all, but you don’t have to reassure me. At this stage in the game, even ‘you SUCK’ is unlikely to keep me from writing.” You know, trying to be kind to the delicate ego of the budding author.

Part of me is wondering if (s)he was serious.

Still, it was personal, and I’m heartened a lot by that no matter what.

¹As in, “Oh… well fudge. Anyway, gotta lick this envelope and get my ass to the post orifice sos I can send me out my next batch o’queries.”

Writing in public, especially places like coffee houses, has an interesting reputation.

J.K. Rowling wrote at least part of the Harry Potter series in various coffee houses.  John Scalzi thinks it’s an attempt to get laid.  (I have never once gotten a proposition while writing in public and want to know where in hell he’s going, cause I could do with… Well, nevermind).

Me?  I like writing in bars, pubs and coffee houses.  Oh sure, if I’m working on an emotionally difficult scene, or if I  need scads of research on a topic, I’m more likely to be found in my writin’ chair that a former partner insisted we buy when shopping for living room furniture.  (I’m still grateful he overrode my inner Scrooge.  I’m sitting here in it now, and I spend a lot of time blissfully working from it).

So what is it that drives the introvert out in public to write?

For me, it’s a change of scene, and a lack of a wireless connection.  I write on a Palm Pilot with one of those little foldable keyboards.  No net surfing — just basic word processing.  If I have research to do, I do it before I go out to write and store it in a file on my Palm (I’m really fond of Quickword, by the way, and highly recommend it).   I live about 1/4 mile from a pub, and just the act of walking to there will often be enough to get the creative juices flowing.  I get ideas best moving forward.  Even as a little kid, I’d get my best ideas for stories riding my bike.

Sure, like everyone else, I wanna be a richnfameous writer.  Then I take a sip of wine while I’m working, look out the window and realize that while Jo Rowling and Neil Gaiman have made it, and that’s really cool, I’m doing something they can’t.  (Not sour grapes.  I’d rather have extraordinary professional success!  But hey, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the little things, too).

Like any writer in the world, I’m a compulsive reader.

Unlike many readers, I’m also an audiobook addict.

My delight in being read to started in the womb, from what I’ve been told. My mother read to me while she was pregnant, and after I was born, read to me for at least an hour a night for much of my very early childhood.

This did not interfere with me learning to read. In fact, I think it was rather the opposite. While not a precocious reader (I learned in first grade), I caught on to the idea of letters and sounds very swiftly, and became an unusually fast reader.

But in spite of the stacks of books I took home from the library every week, I still enjoyed being read to. When I was fifteen and had mono, I was too weak to read (which was a frustrating experience), Mom very patiently read the entire novelization of E.T. the extraterrestrial to me. (Hey, it was all I was up to. Me being too sick to read was dangerously ill, let me tell you!)

Some people are concerned that if you get into audiobooks, you won’t read “real” books as much. I’ve not found this to be so. When I go to the library, as I do most weeks, I will check out an audiobook. I also check out four or five print books at the same time.

I do love the audiobook experience for many writers — Terry Pratchett being tops on the list. There are Discworld novels I’ve never read in print, but have enjoyed very much in audio. (Just finished Making Money, as it happens. It’s a fun romp, and has a very funny answer to many of the Vetinari fans!) For that matter, I’ve never held a print copy of Anansi Boys in my hand, much less read it, but it’s one of my favorite books. I find that being read aloud to often has a dimension to the experience that enhances rather than takes away from the experience of reading.

Reinhard Engels, in his Audiodidact podcast, had an interesting thing to say about audiobooks that I rather like:

Some people seem to think that listening is qualitatively inferior to reading. That the written word is somehow a purer medium. This is nuts. If anything, it’s the other way around. We think of the written word as this old fashioned, quasi sacred thing in comparison with say the internet, but writing was once high tech too. Writing is just a very lossy compression and storage technology for speech.

There’s an extra dimension, though, that I think it should behoove the writer of fiction to pay attention to. The very best writers’ works translate very well to spoken word. If you can’t read it aloud well, it’s generally not very good writing. I’ve started using it as an editing test with good results. This essay, for instance, has had some changes made because you can read the sentence, but cannot say it. <grin>I have placed information vital to the survival to the Rebellion in the memory systems of this R2 unit. My father will know how to retrieve it…¹

Audiobooks need not be expensive. My public library has audiobooks for download, even! Check with yours. Many do. I am sorry to say that they have not been licensed with iTunes, which is a pain, as I cannot transfer them to my iPod without the rather expensive (in time and money) hack of burning them to a CD an importing them that way. Still, I have a laptop and can plug it into my house’s stereo system if I want to listen while moving around the house. I was a member of Audible for about a year, and found it a less expensive way to enjoy audiobooks.

I encourage anyone who loves to read, though, to try audiobooks. It doesn’t have to be for fiction. I find them a great way to learn while doing another task that does not require my brain but does require my hands. You can download lectures on lots of subjects, you can learn a language, or you can just have fun.

¹Carrie Fisher once commented that she hated this line, as it is stilted and difficult to deliver well.

“Bother”, said Pooh. “Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers with the Heffalump. Piglet, meet me in transporter room three.”

— Probably Stolen From Nancy Buttons. Most of my other sigs are.

I incautiously sent my son an email with this sig line. I have now been requested to write a story about it.

See, I’m on my way to becoming the next Neil Gaiman. I get writing prompts from my kids. (Oh, let me have my fantasy, dammit).

My son is an odd duck.

Whenever we have a meal with chicken with the bones in (roasted whole chicken, Mama was too cheap to buy boneless, skinless chicken breasts, you name it), he requests that dinner the next day is garbage soup.

Garbage soup is not actually a specific meal.  What I do is toss the bones of the old meal and any leftover meat into a pot of water and let it simmer most of the day to make a rich stock.  Then about 20 minutes before dinner, I strain out the bones, pick out the meat, toss that into the pot and start getting creative with whatever I have in the fridge and pantry that wants eating up.   Carrots, potatoes that need eating, ginger, garlic, onion, you name it.  Then I season it however I get a wild hare across my butt to do so.  Sometimes it has pasta in, sometimes rice.

This is a meal we usually have while watching some science fiction show.  (Mama’s been on an Andromeda kick lately.  Bless Netflix for its regular delivery of Tyr!)

While the frugality of it pleases me, I find it amusing my son is so fond of the dish.

Being a writer is a lot like making garbage soup.  You’re taking the leftovers of life and turning it into a nourishing, savory dish.  It’s such a frugal thing, saving the dribs and drabs of what you see around you — the little throw-away moments of life, and recycling it into something to feed the soul.

Writer’s Block is often only a failure of nerve, but don’t let that bother you.

I did something foolish last night and went back to re-read what I’ve been doing from the beginning.

“Now how can re-reading your writing be foolish?” I hear you ask. Or would if I could hear what people not even in my house are saying when the air conditioner’s white noise interferes with me being able to hear my son…

Sorry.

We were talking about foolish, weren’t we?

The writing method I use is basically to go hammer and tongs at the first draft until it is done — not bothering to re-read more than yesterday’s work to get my mind in gear. I do this because without a first draft to rip apart and edit, you’re kind of screwed.

I found myself wanting to tweak stuff here, add a scene there… all the crap I knew I’d be tempted to do and would prevent me from that lovely -30- which means I can sit on it then go back and edit.

I did resist. (Aren’t you proud). And now I’ve got to put all that stuff out of my mind to finish That Damned Book.

Yeah, it’s That Damned Book again. I’ll love it later. Not now.

Sent out a couple of queries to At the Foot of the Throne to agents today.

I always feel a little anxious when I send these things out, though mostly not.  I’ve a fine collection of rejection slips, so it’s not a huge deal to me.

People say you need a thick skin to break into writing.  I don’t necessarily know that’s so in the early stages.  A pre-printed rejection form doesn’t have the zing, I think, that a detailed analysis of why you suck would.  While a novice in the industry, I know the detailed analysis means you’re getting close, so I’m not so sure that would get to me all that much!

I often wonder how I’ll deal with the “yes”.  I mean, the rejection forms?  I’ve gotten plenty.  But critics?  That, I’ve never dealt with — or at least not much.   Wearing my other hat as a polyamory activist, and writing a weekly column, I do get people who disagree with my stuff all the time.  I cheer that, to be honest.  It means people are reading it, thinking about it and reacting.  I mean, sure, I get the occasional feedback that makes me grind my teeth a little.

How’s that gonna be with a published book?  No idea.  I’m often curious how the pros react.  <grin>