So, Your Baby Has Been Rejected!

Veteran Grip writer Regina Carlysle is here today filling in for Dakota Rebel who is out dealing with a family situation this week. The rest of the Grip crew would like to thank Regina, and send our best wishes to Dakota and her family.

Rejection, huh? Hey, I know a little bit about that and if you’re a writer, it’s something most of us have to learn to live with. Rejection happens in the business. From a logical perspective, we know a publisher is a business and they are looking for things that are right for them but try telling that to a writer. A completed manuscript is your BABY. You’ve conceived it. You’ve nurtured it. You want to see it spread its wings and fly. We want everyone to love our baby as much as WE do. It’s only natural.

The thing is, not everyone is going to see the beauty of your baby the way you do and this can lead to rejection.

I wrote for fifteen years before making my first sale so the topic of rejection is something with which I’m vastly familiar. In those days, we didn’t have the option of internet publishing. It just wasn’t there. If you sought publication, your only alternative was with the giant publishers in New York and we ALL know how hard it is to land a contract with them. That doesn’t necessarily mean your work SUCKS, it just means they are overstocked with authors or the genre you’ve subbed to them.

In the end, it’s not about rejection so much as how you handle it. We all face it from time to time and yes, everyone can say…don’t take it personally but, dang it, it’s hard not to. I normally give myself a day to mope and whine. That’s it. As a writer, it’s important to keep going. Have a work in progress going at all times. So when those rejections come, dive back in. Don’t start second guessing your talents and just know that SOMEWHERE is a publisher who will love it. Immediately send the rejected manuscript elsewhere then go back to the work in progress. In other words, keep plugging, keep typing, keep generating ideas.

Check out Spanish Topaz by Regina Carlysle, released TODAY from Ellora's Cave.