Anyway, I know I didn’t enter but I do feel the pain of everyone who didn’t make it into the top 28. Believe me, I’ve been there. I entered SYTYCW and New Voices twice. Both times with both comps I got precisely nowhere. Not even a callback. And that’s not even counting all the rejections and knockbacks I’ve had both before and since.

And you know what? It doesn’t matter how many times someone says, ‘competitions are so subjective’. Or ‘it doesn’t meant your story is crap’. Or ‘it was just a popularity contest’. Or ‘hey, I didn’t get anywhere and look, I’ve sold fifty bajillion books’. Not getting anywhere STILL SUCKS!  And you’re allowed to feel bad about it, just like you’re allowed to moan about it to trusted friends and family and like-minded CPs.

But the one thing you must NOT do is give up. What you have to do is figure out a way to deal with the disappointment and carry on.

Because being disappointed doesn’t stop with getting a rejection or not placing in a contest. It follows you through once you’ve been published too. You might not get the sales you wanted. You don’t like your cover. You don’t want to have to do the heinous revisions that have just landed. Your next story idea has been nixed by your editor. You didn’t get the agent you’ve been hanging out for. You didn’t win the Rita or get the Nobel Prize for Fiction.There’s a whole host of disappointments just waiting around the corner in other words. So you kind of have to accept that if you want to be a writer, disappointment is something you’ll have to live with.   

My method, at first, was chocolate. Then shopping. Then alcohol. Then crying on the couch. Then more alcohol. Then weeping over my computer to my CPs. Then more alcohol. You get the idea…But despite all that, the best way of dealing with disappointment for me was writing.  Getting excited about a new story, immersing myself in that instead of thinking about what I hadn’t achieved. And then sending out another submission because while a submission was out there, I had hope. Pathetic maybe, but true.

It was about this time last year that I’d just about had enough. I’d had a few contest successes locally but only one partial request – that I angsted about so much the writing of it became terrifying rather than exciting. Then came nothing with New Voices and along with it another rejection. I’d just about had it with writing. It wasn’t fun anymore, it was a chore. I was so scared to write anything because I found myself second guessing EVERYTHING I wrote. Did I have conflict? Were my characters acting consistently? Was it just about sex again??? My passion in life had become an unpleasant task and it was awful. I hated it.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know what I did after that. But I’m going to say it again because it bears reminding. What I thought  was ‘bugger this’ and flung all my craft out the window and wrote something that I didn’t think I’d ever submit anywhere. It was for me and me alone. No one was going to read it so I could write whatever the hell I wanted. If I wanted lots of angst? Go for it! If I wanted lots of sex? Go for that too! Tough alpha male? Yep. Sweet. Friends to lovers? Do it. So I did. I wrote my story and completely broke out of the fear trap I’d got myself into. And the key to it was that NO ONE was going to see this so it didn’t matter what I wrote.

And it became my first sale.

So that’s why I say don’t give up. Do whatever you have to do to deal with your disappointment. Then get back in the saddle and keep going. It’s the ONLY way it’s going to happen.

There really isn’t any further to fall right now.

So. Really. Where do I go from here? Where do I want to go from here? Am I any good at all? Or is the universe trying to tell me something and I’ve been too stupid to listen?

1. Print it out then burn it.
2. Print it out, pull it to pieces very, very slowly. Then burn it piece by piece.
3. Print it out, frame it, stick it on your wall and stare at it every day, brooding on your revenge.
4. Print it out, put it on the ground and stamp all over it in sharp stilettos.
5. Print it out, wave your recent contest win certificate in its face screaming ‘in your face, form rejection!’
6. Hit the delete key and send it to your Recycle bin, then take out the trash, baby.
7. Do nothing with it. Leave it in your inbox and never think of it again.

Okay, we can safely say that I did not do number 7.

First up, big heaping thanks, gratitude and endless supplies of your favourite tipple to all you lovely people for the hugs and suppportive comments. You guys are – honest to god – the reason I am still here, still writing, still waiting in Unpublished Author Waiting Limbo (UAWL). Without you and the CPs I would have given up and gone home.

Still, I won’t lie. Getting a form R for SYTYCW has made me a stupid, blubbery, hopeless mess. It’s made me feel like I haven’t learned a thing. that I’m going backwards. Now, I know this isn’t true. I know there are a hundred and one different reasons for forms, that they can have nothing to do with your writing or your story. That you can’t let them get you down, that you need to get over it. I do know all those things. But those are all intellectual responses. It’s the feelings that are the tough part to deal with because I am an emotional drama-queen kind of person.

With Rs, I know I have to get to the bottom before I can climb back up the other side. I have to wallow in the sense of failure, the doubt, and, yeah, the jealousy that others are doing better than I am. If I’m lucky my CPs will bear with me while I vent a little bit – because I have to do this as well otherwise it’ll eat me up inside. But it’s only once I’ve done all this that I can let it go and start feeling better about it. No, it’s not an easy process but it’s the way I am and I just have to go with it. Most of the time I come out the other side feeling positive and ready to tackle things again but sometimes the process goes on for longer than a couple of days and it takes me a while to let go of it.

Anyway, it’s taken a while for me to let go of this. And I probably still haven’t quite yet. It’s thrown me into a huge spiral of doubt about my other submissions too. Because how can it not? If you don’t get a reason for why something was rejected, then how do you know you haven’t repeated it in your other submissions? But that aside, I’ve had lots of great advice from very wise people about what I should do with this particular sub. I’m still not quite sure where I’m going to take it just yet. I’ve heard that it’s wise to change it if you’re going to resub but as I don’t know what’s wrong with it in the first place, I’m not sure what to change. The writing I’m assuming is not the issue since (yes, I shall blow my own trumpet) the writing has netted several contest placings and a revisions on a full. So I can only assume it was the conflict/characters. Which means changing everything. And I don’t know that I want to do that.

I guess I shouldn’t pout too much about it though. The sub was me trying a new line, always a bit of a gamble. And it probably didn’t help that I was trying to do things a bit differently. It’s something I always try and think of when I’m writing a new story – how can I make my story different? The problem with doing different is that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Most of the time it hasn’t but I guess the fact that I’ve still got an ed willing to work with me means that somewhere along the track, doing things differently has been a good thing.

In the meantime I have finished the rough draft of another partial, my chess player. Yes, that’s something a bit different again, which will either work or it won’t. But I guess that’s my way of challenging myself. Anyway, that brings the grand total of rough partials to five. How’s that for not giving up?

As for that form R, which of those options do you think I did?

Anyway, there are various negative ways of looking at this:

1. I have learned nothing in the three years I have been honing my craft.
2. My synopsis was NOT the best one I’d ever done, even though I thought it was pretty good (see number 1).
3. I got the line completely wrong.
4. I got the voice completely wrong.
5. The chapter sucked. The synopsis sucked. My writing sucks. I suck.

Or there are the positive ways:

1. They had so many entries and since mine was one of the last, they wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible so a form was quickest.
2. The wrong editor read it and perhaps someone from the UK office would have been more favourable to it.
3. It was a gamble and it didn’t work. Still have two other subs in…

Notice how the negatives outweigh the positives? Still trying to come up with some more positives!

What didn’t help is that the ed I have been working with for my Riva subs let me know that she won’t be able to get back to me till mid-March. It’s not her fault and I’m really happy that she let me know but….man, I’m getting really sick of being in Unpublished Author Waiting Limbo!

Okay, so sucky day for me today. I’m still at the bottom of the well and currently have no idea how to climb out. Hugs appreciated though.

You see, here are my problems:

1. I have been writing romances since I was 12. Now these were only for myself, not for publication. So I have had over 20 years of writing stories where I could do whatever the hell I wanted and that seemed to mostly be concerned with piling as much angst as I could into it. Hey, I didn’t have to please anyone but myself so why not? Flashforward 28 years and I’m still trying to stop myself from piling on the angst. Fear of failure? Sure. Why not add fear of being vulnerable too? Oh yes, and also fear of not being wanted, hating to be protected and stick an unplanned pregnancy in there too. Enough conflict for ya?

2. I HATE being hit over the head with the obvious as a reader. QED, as a writer I am not obvious enough. This combined with a fear of my characters being too self aware, means sometimes the conflict isn’t obvious in the first chapter. And neither is their motivation.

3. I came late to reading romance. I only started reading a lot of it 3 years ago. Up till then, the only romance I read was an M&B binge every 6 months or so. I’ve been trying to catch up on the genre but up until 3 years ago, I didn’t even know a romance had to have an HEA, let alone heroic, aspirational, sympathetic characters.

So these three little problems of mine have all conspired against me. Not only do I over complicate my conflicts so it’s not clear, I am also not obvious about them so readers (and editors!) don’t know what motivates them. Ergo this makes them unsympathetic because if you don’t know what motivates them, you can’t relate to them. Add to that a tendency to want to break the ‘romance’ mould with my characters because I want to do something different (and not knowing what’s ‘acceptable’ and what’s not), and you have a recipe for disaster. And rejection.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, it’s taking me a VERY long time to both be aware of these problems and to overcome them. My latest sub I have tried hard to stick to one conflict for both my characters, made sure it’s clear and have tried to follow it to its conclusion in the synop. I have also tried to make it more obvious in the first chapter. The thing I’m most worried about is my heroine. I’ve – again! – tried to make her different. I hope I haven’t overstepped the mark. She’s spiky and prickly, and kind of rude. There is a reason for this and I’d really like to think I got it across in that first chapter but…

Who knows? Only time will tell I guess. Anyway, it’s back to NTAI for me! Where’s everyone else at?

At first this was easy. When I started submitting, I knew I would make mistakes and get rejected, and I had no problem admitting my mistakes and sharing them with people so that others might find it useful. Of course, that was then. Sharing the rejection on my revised full was pretty hard. And sharing the rejections subsequent to that has been harder still. Mainly because with all this editorial support, aren’t I supposed to be getting better? Am I not learning anything?

Anyway, this is just to say that it’s a very public journey I’ve chosen to take. And yes, it’s my choice. And you should know that sometimes I hate posting my failures or mistakes up here. But I do because that’s how I started and that’s how I should continue. I have learned a lot and I know I still have a lot to learn, and I’m still a librarian inside, I still want to share my knowledge with those who might find it useful.

But the other thing is that I also share about how I feel about my mistakes and rejections. I know some people don’t like this. It’s uncomfortable. Hey, it’s uncomfortable for me too. But I do it because I want people to know it’s normal to feel angry, to feel sad, to feel disappointed when you get rejected or when you don’t place in a contest. It’s normal to cry. It’s normal to want to give up. It’s normal to feel jealous of those who have made it. It’s normal to yell ‘it’s not fair’.
I have felt all of those things and probably will continue to do so. But you’re allowed to feel that way, don’t let anyone tell you can’t. If you care about something, then you will feel crap when it doesn’t happen.

I have had some lovely emails lately from people, telling me how much they appreciate my honesty on this blog. So I thought I should say that I shall continue as I have started, posting my failures and mistakes. And I’ll continue to whine when I feel I’m not getting anywhere. And no doubt, I’ll continue to say ‘I give up’ at least once a month. And if you find this uncomfortable, that’s okay. You don’t have to read. I’m doing it for those who feel they can’t say it publically, or don’t want to share, who think they’re alone when they get that rejection and they feel like someone’s cut out their heart with a spoon. Well, you’re not alone. We ALL feel that way, no matter how many people pretend otherwise.

The truth? This blog, the people who read it, the commenters and the lurkers, and my CPs are the reason I’m still here. Yes, last week I wanted to give up. I was angry. I was disappointed. I felt ignored and I indulged myself with all those feelings. But I thought of all the people who have followed me on this journey and who are on their own roads, and I know I can’t give up. I’ve got to keep going. So, having indulged my feelings thoroughly because that’s how I deal with it, I’m putting them aside and getting on with it.

This may sound like a wah-wah, whatever post for all the battle hardened submitters and authors who have been doing this for years. Fair enough. Maybe after another few years I’ll have developed the same attitude and got my hard shell. But until then, this post is really for the people who haven’t been at this long and are struggling.

I pledge to you that I will continue to be honest with how I’m getting on. This will be hard for me but I’ll do it. I won’t criticise people or organisations, this is all about me, the drama queen writer. It’s a hard, hard journey but I am not a hard person and sometimes, it’s okay to admit that.

Bottom line though is that I didn’t get it right. And I know why. To be honest, I suspected that I might not have pulled it off about a month after I’d sent it. Such a horrible feeling. But I really hoped I’d be given the opportunity to correct it…Sadly not. Oh well. I still think the story holds up and I do plan to rewrite it at some stage. You will not have seen the last of it!

Anyway, at least I now know the problem with one night stand stories. How to get that balance between sex and emotion. The partial was rejected because there was no emotional connection between the two characters, which made their romance unbelievable. This approach is okay for something like Blaze, but not so for MH (or any of the M&B lines probably). There HAS to be an emotional connection between the characters first. My thought was ‘but if these two felt an emotional connection, they’d run a mile. And they weren’t looking for one anyway’.
That is true. But here’s the thing – only the reader needs to get a hint of it. The characters themselves don’t need to know. Subconsciously they might feel ‘something’ is different about this person they’ve met, something that is totally unlike anything they’ve ever experienced but do you think they will admit it to themselves? No way. They’ll explain away the feeling by saying to themselves ‘it’s just physical’ or ‘it’s just that he’s unbelievably arrogant’ or that ‘I don’t like people who don’t do what I want’ or some other excuse to explain this weird intensity.
But the reader – who likes to know things the characters don’t – will be going ‘aha!’
And there you have that vital emotion. And that’s what was missing from my partial.

Interestingly, none of the other mss I’ve got suffer from that so at least I don’t have to go back and rewrite all of them!

Actually, now I think about it, that’s why this R doesn’t suck too badly. Because I know what the problem was and I can see it what I wrote. Which means I can fix it for next time.

And speaking of next time, yes, I have my next sub ready to go. Will get the eds thoughts on the premise first and if she’s interested, it’s gone!

Onwards and upwards, my friends. Gotta keep climbing that mountain.

The response was lovely, don’t get me wrong. Very encouraging. But the reason for the R was because it was too much about the sex. At least the partial was. Now, I can see what the ed means and while I was editing the story, I thought I would have to go back and layer in some more emotional stuff. But lowering the emphasis on the sex is easy, it’s the conflict that matters. At least I thought that was the most important part. And it wasn’t the conflict it was rejected for.

Problem is, in this story my characters don’t want an emotional connection and will fight it. So for them, sex IS all it’s about initially. In fact, they’re determined to think it’s just physical for as long as possible. Perhaps it’s that approach that makes it not suitable. Then again, I’ve read lots of other one night stand stories in MH where it’s all about the physical initially, and it seems to work for others.

Sigh. Anyway, the ed told me to put it aside for a while and come back to it later so I guess it’s not a complete waste of time. But I am going to email her and ask her for clarification on the issue.

Right at the moment though, I feel as if I have to write an absolutely perfect, no revisions necessary kind of partial to even warrant being asked for more. Which is beyond irritating when the last requested full had no conflict, lots of stereotypes, pacing issues and all sorts of other problems that this one didn’t have.

Okay, so thanks for letting me vent. Funnily enough I’m not as gutted as I thought I’d be. I’m just frustrated as to what it is they want from me. Oh well, good thing I have sub number eight waiting to go.

Why? Surely there’s nothing happy making about a rejection? Actually, the first rejection I got was happy making and started me on the road to taking my writing seriously. It was from the Instant Seduction Contest and the wonderful editor told me I had potential, that my voice was Modern Heat, and that though they didn’t want to see any more of my contest entry (just as well since I hadn’t written it), they’d be happy to look at anything else I had. Well, I was over the moon! Yes, I had potential! I expected to hear nothing at all from this contest and I was so thrilled. So off I sent my next partial.

Along come rejection number 2. I was unsurprised since I’d already by that time (having actually read some Modern Heats!) figured out it wasn’t a goer. But still, they told me what was wrong with it and they wanted more. So off I sent another partial, while at the same time, entering the Feel the Heat contest. This was where things got serious. I got more feedback from FTH. I began to learn about internal conflict. Still hadn’t got it though, my entry was rejected (rejection number 3). But they saw potential in the other partial that I’d send before the contest. I was asked for the full.

So I sent away my first full and back it came with revisions. My heroine needed conflict. I was learning, but I struggled with that. It was so hard. I hadn’t learned that rewriting needed to be done, that adding conflict would change the character, that once you change the character, the plot might change too. And proper conflict still eluded me. I still didn’t understand. I got a second lot of revisions but the conflict jigsaw still wasn’t complete. I still didn’t get it.

Rejection number 4 was very hard. The ms was so nearly there but I didn’t have the knowledge I needed to make it work and the editors knew it. But now I could see why it hadn’t worked. It was becoming clearer. Thinking I had it, I dived into another partial. Yes, surely I had the conflict now. But I was still thinking of the conflict as a thing separate from my characters. I wasn’t looking at my characters as whole people, just as receptacles for the conflict I’d thought up.

So back came rejection number 5. Even harder than rejection number 4 in many ways. But the one thing about it was that finally I was beginning to see my problem. And it made me very determined to learn how to fix it. With rejection number 5 also came advice from Michelle Styles about synopses and about the actions and reactions characters take. Another piece of the jigsaw fell into place.

This time I sent off just a synopsis, after much hard work. Didn’t get a rejection this time but a warning – think about your characters. You are not telling the story of a particular conflict, you are telling the story of two people. So who are these people? Why are they the way they are? Why are we even interested? And more light dawned. Conflict and character suddenly became much clearer. I felt I’d taken another big step forward. So finally I wrote the partial and sent it off.

I’d love to end this post with a full request but I can’t since I don’t know yet. However this time I’m taking nothing for granted. I may still be missing a part of the jigsaw, one I can’t see yet. But one thing I’m sure of, if that very first ms had been accepted, I would be struggling to write a second. I have learned SO much in the past year though the rejections I’ve had that I truly don’t know if I would have had a second accepted. The rejections have been horrible, gut-wrenching and depressing. But they’ve also been amazingly helpful, encouraging and focussing, and I would not have learned all that I have if I hadn’t had them.

Of course if this partial is rejected, I will give up. Okay? Cause one can only love rejections so much.

(Yes. I’m kidding. So far).

A rejection stinks. It’s not easy and it won’t get any easier. There will, no doubt, be more rejections to come. You can’t control the rejections but, to paraphrase Michelle Styles’ wise words, what you can control is your response to them. Yesterday I wallowed completely and utterly, allowed myself to think about giving up, allowed myself to feel I was hopeless and I’d never do it. But now I am done with wallowing. Time for my professional response which is: keep writing. Work on that next submission. Make it the best. Take the hurt and turn it into determination.

I want to say though that part of dealing with rejection is also sharing the pain of it with others who understand and you all who have read this blog do understand. And the support and faith you have given me is amazing. I am so lucky to be part of this community. So huge thanks for all the comments and encouragement from yesterday – it really got me through the worst of it.

And, since I am a writer, I have advice for other writers who want to do this, who are lurking and thinking of submitting: to paraphrase my old boss, romance writing is not for sissies. It’s a hard road and a long one. You may take a step forward, only to fall back again. But if you love writing, if you can’t NOT write, then don’t let the fear of rejection hold you back. Yes, you will get rejected. Yes, it will hurt. But you will not be published if you don’t submit, if you don’t keep writing, if you give up.

Right, since I am very good at NOT taking my own advice when it comes to my writing, I need to sit down and take a good look at my next submission!

Oh and Aideen? No, you didn’t see the words ‘give up’ on my blog. They weren’t there. You must have mistaken them for “NOT giving up”