Recently I found myself trying to explain to someone just beginning on the road of art (is rocky. Also ink and paint stained) why having your “thing” that you made rejected hurts.
Even if you think your “thing” isn’t even good.
Even if you “knew” it was going to likely be rejected. It hurts, like a piece of you just got kicked.
I’ve tried to explain this before, and got yelled at for using a metaphor of giving your babies to trad pub (when you’re working for them) and watching them throw them into the volcano.
I got told that’s silly because manuscripts aren’t babies, and that’s over dramatizing.
But it’s not, really. Look, sure, manuscripts aren’t alive. And sure, it’s not “the same” except where it is.
You do spend time gestating each, and it takes a toll on the mind and body. Also, when you release “thing” into the world, they’re really not much, but mostly your dreams and what you put into it. (Not saying babies aren’t human, but you don’t know them yet. You superimpose your dreams and feelings on them. Which keeps you alive through the sleepless nights, but that’s something else.)
And when they’re hurt/ignored/attacked it feels like it’s your being hit. And if the thing took you long enough or is particularly special, it feels like the hit might be fatal.
So I was trying to explain this by “You put a piece of you in it.”
And realized why so many people go badly astray on that advice.
Look, you don’t have to CONSCIOUSLY put a piece of you in. It just seems to go in naturally.
When people tell you that you have to put a piece in, people tend to either Mary Sue or put in their obsession which if poorly done turns everyone else off.
That’s neither needed or required. If you’re writing something you care about, something you came up with organically, a piece of you is in it.
And if you’re good at it, this is true even in assigned work. You love it, so a piece of you and your love is in it.
Now, does this mean the work is good? Oh, heck no. Sometimes you love your early efforts, even knowing how much they suck. And knowing how much you have to learn
Also it doesn’t mean, even when you feel compelled to create them all, that you put an equal piece of you into everything. Some things hurt a lot more when rejected, because you put more of you in them.
I can’t explain it more clearly than that, because it’s almost metaphysical. It’s not time spent. It’s not even how much you “love” the product. You can hate it, and it still has a chunk of you in it.
This is why creating by the book, like painting by numbers, not as a hobby, but as what you think is “art” hurts you at some level. And not creating hurts at some level. And conforming your art till it’s deformed hurts.
Because it’s linked to you, and through its mistreatment and misapplication something comes through to taint you.
But though I can’t explain it, I know how to treat it:
1- Don’t worry about putting a piece of you in. It will go in, anyway. You can’t prevent it.
2- Know it will hurt when it’s rejected/mistreated. Expect it. Treat yourself kindly when that happens. You’ve been wounded. Even if you know it’s not “personal”. It still is.
3 – Keep working. Stopping won’t protect you. It will just kill you slowly.
4- If what you’re doing is destroying a piece of you IN THE CREATION stop. You’re doing it wrong, and if continued, you’ll hurt yourself badly. Note, this is not the pain of creation or reaching past the comfortable, but actual “This feels like what I’m doing is making me feel dirty/dead inside/broken.” That means you’re forcing that piece of you into a shape it shouldn’t have. I don’t care what the reward is. It’s not enough. Don’t do that.
Mad Genius Club 
19 responses to “All You Need Is Love”
If it doesn’t hurt when one of your stories is rejected, you’re doing it wrong. A good story has a little piece of your heart in it.
I saw the header image, and all I can think is Robin Hood: “I’ll cut your heart out with a spoon!”
As for #4, yeah, what price your soul?
Which is why I finally came out of the political closet and cut myself from everyone but Baen by doing so. Totally worth it.
“Look, sure, manuscripts aren’t alive.”
Yeah they are. They’re just as alive as anything else you do. Those people in my WIP, I know them better than most real people I’ve met.
That they aren’t “real” is essentially a side-issue. ~:D
Voices and people in your head, written down and expressed so others can see them. I think this used to be understood by editors. The stories read as if the editor at least knew it anyway, and knew not to treat the author’s story like a disposable paintbrush.
In truth that might be one of the things I’m missing in stories since 2010-ish. The DEI check-box method makes the story a mere tool of propaganda, a carrier for an agenda. It makes the author a replaceable machine part, a mere robot for creating carriers.
“I am not a number, I am a free man.” Number 6.
The story machines in 1984, that create cheap socially acceptable fiction for the proles. One of the major characters has a job overseeing them (think it’s Winston, but too tired to check right now). That’s what a lot of tradpub editors seem to want writers to be. The LLMs finally make it possible for writers to have that job, if they’d rather do that for the paycheck than try to make up what the editors want under their own power.
That’s Julia.
Right, thank you!
I have an entire world…. It’s a weird, fractured world, but it won’t leave me alone.
As to #4, I seem to have a built-in failsafe. It’s called “getting stuck.” Others might call it writer’s block. It happens when I have my good characters do the wrong thing. I’ve ripped out a lot of pages after thinking I had a plot solution, but it was one that my characters and I couldn’t live with. After all, they got stuck, too.
This happened to me so often in the beginning. But the big bad is when you know what the publisher will buy and won’t, and distort your entire story.
There’s a lot of freedom in being indie.
I feel like I’m still slowly relaxing into my proper shape five years later.
Someone suggested I share my outtakes with my newsletter. No way. I don’t want all that wrongness in my readers’ memories.
Writing horror got me out of a bad spot. I needed the distraction and hey, it paid. A little. But that little was enough for the time, and in the end everything more or less worked out alright.
The one where (almost) everybody died and the reader was front seat for every stutter-stop when plans just didn’t work out and the things ate your face was probably the nadir of that time. I learned a lot about pacing though. About how much detail is just enough, and how to really yank on those emotional strings.
Trying for a bit more subtlety these days.
Sometimes putting the words onna page is therapy. Putting it out there to get stabbed is a risk, sure, and sometimes it’s pure crap. But the process of turning thought-stuff into words that affect other human psyches is a complex task. At least, for most of us it is.
It is a skill that requires training. It can be lost with time away, but regained with practice and diligence. Getting the reaction you were intending for the audience is… Well, it’s something new authors chase like hard drugs.
That and the lack of sleep when no writing happens. That tends to drive the digits to the keyboard.
100% Everything you said. This is the way.
What if #2 doesn’t happen? After the third or fourth rejection, are you inured to it? A short story I worked on for quite a few revisions has been given a pass three times now by three different outlets. Beta readers have really liked it, but publishers haven’t. Maybe it’s no good? Of course, telling yourself the editors are idiots for passing on it is a form of treating the wound, yes?
PS. I sent the whole novel to you. You can pick and choose parts to save time instead of reading the completed draft.
LOL. So, at one time I had 60 short stories circulating. I could sort of live with one rejection, but when I got sixty in one day it almost put me in the hospital.
To be fair, at this point, I wouldn’t send it to publishers. But it’s your choice.
PS- Will read. Sorry. This weekend and half the week were lost to nightmares and not sleeping. I have no explanation as to why, but there it is.
Oh sure, Sarah. I have no intention at this point to submit the novel. I just consider it a complete first rewrite. Once I get beta reader feedback, I’d do more work on it. Then, maybe, I’d consider looking for a developmental editor to see if what I wrote is something that can be made “good enough” to send out. Alas, no income to spare at this point.
Thanks