Update: On the Path to Publication: by Elizabeth Stark

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett

At the start of this summer, in June, my agent sent my new novel out to nearly a dozen publishers. I chronicled the process in blogs and newsletters and talked about it in class. I did this for two reasons. 1) I thought my experience would be valuable to you, my audience of writers. Part of being a mentor is sharing the ups and downs of one’s own process. Right? And 2) I expected some dramatic good things to happen, quickly.

If you’d asked me, I would have said that anything could happen. I’d watched brilliant writers with strong books struggle, fail to place them, search in vain for agents or publishers. This is a very strange time in publishing. E-books are taking a rapidly expanding share of the market. Publishing houses no longer can afford to build writers, to sally through a “failed” book or two in favor of the talent powering the effort. No one knows what actually makes a book sell, my prior agent confessed, except being an Oprah pick. But I’ve met authors whose books were Oprah picks, and that can mean that sales for a next book that would in any other context be marvelous are considered disappointing. There’s no easy path here, no guarantees. Editors have to fight with marketing before they can buy a book. Many people have to be convinced.

And then there are the famous stories of the struggles of books. Harry Potter was rejected by twelve publishers before it found a home and wild, international success. I’ve heard about a book that circulated for a year before a publisher bought it; that book remains the bestseller of that author. My own agent told me about a book she’d had a hard time placing that went on to win five awards.

But . . . the reason I am hearing all these stories, stories like the ones I am fond of sharing with my students, is that my own book is meeting the dreaded rejection. I teach these principles on a regular basis:

1) The difference between successful people and others is that successful people fail more often. Look at any story of success (sometimes you have to scratch the surface of a shiny narrative that elides the failure in it) and you find failure. Rejections. Lots of no’s. The more no’s you are getting, the more likely you will be to get that single yes that makes all the difference, that becomes the whole story.

2) It’s a very strange time in publishing. (See above.)

3) Find a way to separate your creative self, your writing life, from the process of submission, rejection and acceptance. And keep sending out.

Here’s the thing: I had reason to expect success. Sure, I’d worked hard at this book, transforming it more than once until I found and formed a strong vessel for a strong, high concept premise. And I’d become a better writer through the years, so the pages themselves are strong, too.

I’d found an agent in about ten days. Finding an agent is as notoriously difficult as finding a publisher. But I’d had two great agents read my book very quickly. One heard about it from a friend in my writing group and asked to see it right away. I had to rush through my final spell check, sitting in a cafe, in the heat of a small panic, and send it off in a hurry. A week later, as I waited to hear, my friend told me, Don’t expect anything. She never takes anyone. The other agent who had it in hand read it quickly because this agent was reading it, too. In the end, this second agent passed on it, but with a detailed and respectful and personal response that gave me hope. And then the agent who never takes anybody took my book.

She had a big revision idea. She said, I could sell your book to Norton right now and it would sell 5000 copies. But I think if you did this, it could be a big book. My friend whose agent this was had recently sold a book in a bidding war that had made its way onto The New York Times bestseller list. I understood what a big book could mean.

I did the revision. My writing group, which had loved the iteration of the book I sold to the agent, loved the revision even more. They had a good, big feeling about this book, too. I revised it one more time and sent it off. My agent had a few notes and I revised again, addressing all of them, and when I sent it back, my agent said we were ready to go out with it.

A letter was crafted. What had been my high concept hook was now a secret, part of the reveal of the book, deep into the story. So we had to find another way to talk about it. My agent’s letter began, “I love every word of THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED.” Off it went.

I talked about it in class. I would report, step-by-step on what happened, the good and the bad. I was on a ride and I would take you along with me.

And I waited and waited. There was nothing to report. I distracted myself by moving houses and cities and by having no childcare. Weeks went by.

One rejection came in. My agent told me that the editor had loved my point of view character, Dora. Did I want to see the letter? I thought perhaps not. It’s so easy to get hooked into something someone says, perhaps carelessly, perhaps as a way of explaining the unexplainable (why she didn’t fall in love with the book). I’d better not see the letters.

It took weeks for the rejections to drip in. Sluggish summer didn’t help. At last tally it was out to three places, but of course my agent doesn’t call me every time a rejection comes in. No news is not good news.

I had a phone meeting with my agent. Was there any note repeated in the letters, anything we might need to address in the manuscript? She hadn’t found anything like that. Her plan is to wait through sticky August, everyone out on vacation, and resubmit in September. She told me about the book that was hard to sell but won five awards. She told me that she thinks my book would be an exciting book to publish; that she would publish it. Yes, she said, it is more fun when there is a bidding war, but not having a bidding war does not speak to the ultimate life of the book in the world.

Last week, one of my wonderful students had a story accepted for submission at a literary journal. It’s also a finalist for a prize and is enroute to a famous author who will be the judge. It’s a story I’d editing a couple times in workshop and suggested would make a good stand-alone piece. (This is a TIP: if you are working on a long project, sometimes you can find shorter pieces within it to place, so that you publish during the years of writing a book.) She told me she’d sent it to about fifteen places and gotten standard rejections. She’d begun to look it over and think it was a piece of crap. And then this news came.

This is the danger of rejections. It seems impossible that so many people can say no to something that is worthy, that is good. It helps to hear about the (as the book of them is called) Rotten Reviews and Rejections of famous authors.

Jorge Luis Borges

‘utterly untranslatable’

Isaac Bashevis Singer

‘It’s Poland and the rich Jews again.’

Anais Nin

‘There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic.’

Jack Kerouac

‘His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation.  But is that enough?  I don’t think so.’

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D H Lawrence

‘for your own sake do not publish this book.’

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

‘an irresponsible holiday story’

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

‘an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.’

Watership Down by Richard Adams

‘older children wouldn’t like it because its language was too difficult.’

On Sylvia Plath

‘There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.’

Crash by J  G Ballard

‘The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.’

The Deer Park by Norman Mailer

‘This will set publishing back 25 years.’

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

‘Do you realize, young woman, that you’re the first American writer ever to poke fun at sex.’

The Diary of Anne Frank

‘The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the “curiosity” level.’

Lust for Life by Irving Stone

(which was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies)

‘ A long, dull novel about an artist.’

(These are taken from the book via a web site that collected and added to them. Read more of them here.)

It can be hard to remember that every book we each love and could not live without is for someone else not worth finishing. We know this just from among our friends. We all fall in love with different books for different reasons. And if we have to stake our livelihood on a book, we have to love it and think many other people will love it, too. The danger for the writer is in losing faith, in the book, in herself.

Publishing, I’m afraid, replicates these dangers. Reviewers grouse about this or that. Books languish. We must find a way to promote our books, to do right by them, and also to find a space aside from all that to keep writing.

During this time, I’ve begun writing 1000 words a day (using 750words.com to track it). A lot of this has been what some people call journaling and what I call brain dump or ranting, depending. But in amongst the general mess of words have been some passages of writing that have mattered to me. I wrote a couple of non-fiction essays and have taken some turns with a voice based on my father’s voice. In each instance, when I am writing something “real,” I find myself bouyed up, happy, connected again. No one has to say yes to it. I have only to write it for my day to become better. I am doing what I am meant to do, that part that is in my control.

Meanwhile, I will keep you posted on the round in September. And we continue, here in the Book Writing World, to plan our Rejection Acceptance Party. In order to come, you have to collect fifty rejections. I have eight. A measily eight. I’d better get going, collecting more. How about you? And if you have any acceptances, you bring some of the drinks. Sound good? I look forward to celebrating the path of success with each of you, littered with rejections and dotted with acceptances, like the ones coming in to the great writers at the Book Writing World who keep me good company (five acceptances this month at last count and a book coming out and the requisite rejections to go with those successes).