SpiralTruth

This is what a rejection letter looks like:

Thank you for your query. I regret I have to pass on many interesting projects due to time constraints. I urge you to query widely of course!

It’s pretty simple, and you can see how it’s been honed through the years to be inhuman enough to discourage you from trying to persuade the person afterwords – which would, of course, necessitate a much harsher shut-down. It feels a lot like a date gone horribly wrong. You know that it’s not really about time constraints. If they really liked you, they’d find a way to fit you in. And you sort of want to know where you went wrong. What can I do so this doesn’t happen again? But you don’t want to be one of those jerks who just won’t take a hint. So you suck it up and try to figure it out on your own. Or you could take the other extreme and rant about how dumb this person was to not recognize such genius! That’s what Gerard Jones does on his site, www.everyonewhosanyone.com. And you know, maybe he’s right. I mean, look at William S. Burroughs. I love reading certain pieces of his writing. But a whole book? Naked Lunch was tough to get through! And we can talk all we want about his use of the “cut up” technique and how some pages were so horrifyingly depraved that your jaw actually drops when you read them. We can say, well, that’s genius. But is it? If I have to struggle like hell to get through a novel that leaves my head spinning, not because it talks about something very technical, but because it’s just pure madness – is that genius? If you want to subject yourself to that, just look to your closest asylum. But some people seem to “get” him, and on their recommendation, he’s boosted to genius status. Similarly, I’m part of the crew of fans who proclaim Hunter S. Thompson as one of the most gifted writers of our time. To others he’s just a guy who took too many drugs and never learned how to be an objective journalist. Once you get the technical aspects down and are able to maintain a certain amount of flow in your writing, “good” and “bad” can start to seem very arbitrary. And Jones’ novel, Ginny Good, seems like it’s good enough that if someone was to believe in it and market it like crazy, telling us he’s the amazingly talented writer he claims to be, enough of us might accept that to make it true. I think the truth lies somewhere in between. And that’s what’s so tricky about trying to sell yourself to a publisher or agent. On the one hand, you have to be confident. If I’m too timid, no one’s going to pay any attention to me. But if I take the Gerard Jones approach, I risk the sort of bitterness and hubris that will keep me from learning anything about the process – at least from learning anything that can help me do better at it. I used to think the way Gerard does about the music scene and why my last band didn’t get more of a draw. We’d constantly complain about how people just don’t know what’s good. Those were the same people we wanted to listen to us. So we turned our shows into a circus for a while. And we got a bit more attention from that. Maybe all we had to do was pull out the right gimmick to trick the masses into liking us. After that band broke up, I started doing a lot of open stages. I remember one night in particular. I had finished my set and was now back as part of the audience. The last person to play was a guy I’d never seen before, and he looked more like a simpleminded hillbilly than a singer-songwriter. Taking a look around the room, I could tell that others were thinking the same thing. Who’s this strange person disguised as one of us, and how long is he going to make us wait in the interest of being polite? He was just a strummer and didn’t have anything close to an exceptional voice. But from the moment his pick touched the strings, we were all entranced. The air felt absolutely electric as he sung and strummed with every ounce of his being. He opened himself right up in that moment, and we all felt it. Watching this guy made me realize that after 6 years of performing, I didn’t know the first thing about it. If only I’d spent less time complaining and more time studying the people who seemed to get ahead. I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe it was the only night he’d ever play that way. But I’m convinced that whoever figures out how to repeat what he did night after night eventually makes it. There might be plenty who make it and don’t deserve it. You can put all your hopes in lucking out, believing that the entire system is designed to keep genius out and mediocrity in. Or you can just spend the time and energy on improving your talent to the point where it can’t be ignored. I’d like to do the latter. I’m not quite there yet, but I know it’s possible. This rejection letter was harder to read than I thought it would be. And it’s kind of discouraging to know that I’ll probably receive a lot more before I get anywhere. I hope I get the odd bit of direct criticism as I’ll be able to use it to improve whatever needs improving. And it’s not fun to write about either. But if this series of posts is to become what I want it to be (an as-it-happens account of a first time novelist trying to get published), then I’ve got to document the bad with the good, and this is a very important bit of the bad. The first rejection. Always the hardest. But strangely enough, I’m still alive. Perhaps I should even take part in the Rejection Letter Olympics suggested by Jenny Cromie at The Golden Pencil. Next steps: Improve my query letter. It still sounds over confident and too long after putting in my “about the author” info. I’m reading Getting Your Book Published for Dummies. All of its example query letters had “about the author” info, so I put it in, but I think it’s maybe wrecking the simplicity of the synopsis. There are still a few words in the synopsis that don’t seem to fit just right, but I do like the simplicity and think that’s a keeper. I think I also need to resist the urge to explain things and give links to the preview of the book. If the query letter’s good, they’ll ask for the manuscript. If they have questions after reading the query letter, that’s a good thing – as long as they’re those nagging questions to which one wants answers.