Hi everyone! Before I get started, let me say a big thank you to Romantically Inclined for inviting me to be guest blogger this week! I’m really looking forward to a terrific seven days of blogging, comments, and interaction with you all…and hopefully I’ll be able to offer a little bit of salient advice about this writing life along the way, too.

So, as you’ve all likely noticed by now, that nasty “R” word is in the title of my very first blog. I chose to write about this first because it’s a necessary part of every writer’s life, as unpleasant as it can be to experience. It doesn’t help that it’s the kind of word that has all sorts of negative connotations attached to it. Words like loser, unworthy, pitiful, hack, pretender, and no-talent. And that’s just naming a few. *g*

However, about nine years ago, right around when I decided to really get serious about writing/achieving publication, I also decided to change if I could - or at least alter a little if I couldn’t completely change it - my view of and reaction to the “R” word. I decided to make it work FOR me instead of against me. And the first step to doing that was to allow myself to get angry when I received a rejection, rather than melting into the puddle of self-doubt and frustration that I was prone to do.

It was a powerful change to make, albeit, not an easy one.

First of all, in order to survive rejection and make it really work for you, you have to fully and totally BELIEVE in yourself and your work. You have to be a little cocky, even, at least in the safety of your own mind. When a rejection comes, change that litany of negatives in your head to something along the lines of “Oh, yeah? You don’t think my book, my hero (or X, Y, or Z, whatever the rejection seems to hinge upon) is compelling enough? Then I guess YOU weren’t the right person for the job of representing me (or editing me)!” After that initial burst of self-pity and grief (which is natural and unavoidable), never, ever, allow yourself to lapse into lasting self-doubt about the quality of your work (all this is assuming, of course, that you’ve whipped that work into the best shape possible and are writing - and submitting - work that is at the level of your personal best at that time).

Once I began doing that, back in 1997, the “R” word was easier to bear. Oh I still got my share of rejections -I have a folder full of 24 “no thanks” letters I saved along the way. But each one of those letters made me stronger. I began to view each rejection as a kind of badge of honor. I was submitting my work…setting it free into the big, scary world of publishing. I was unveiling my baby for critical eyes to see and for some pretty brusque - or even worse, apathetic editors and agents to push away. And I learned.

I learned that sometimes, a rejection isn’t even about your work, but rather an unfortunate result of bad timing (one form rejection, I found out a year or so after the fact, was due to the editor in question simply clearing her desk of all “slush pile” submissions, because her father had recently passed away and she was going to be absent from her office for an extended time. She hadn’t even looked at those submissions, but had instead instructed her assistant to simply “send our form letter rejection” to them all).

I learned that editors and agents are busy, just like the rest of us, and that on occasion they can be careless and make mistakes that reveal that truth (one rejection I received from an agent had my address on the envelope, but when I opened it up, the salutation read, “Dear_____”, listing the name of another quite well-known published author who had kindly written me a letter of recommendation that I had included with my submission. Apparently, the agent in question had simply ripped open my submission envelope, looked at the first name she saw, which happened to be on the top of the recommendation, and without even reading the letter fired off a rejection, addressed to that person, instead of to me).

I learned that there are all kinds of readers, some of whom will enjoy a certain aspect of what I’ve written, and others who will despise that very same aspect (I had multiple rejections on my Scottish manuscript, but while one rejecting editor loved my characterizations, she felt the plot was too dark. Another editor loved the intricacy and emotion conveyed in the story by thought my hero was too dark and cruel).

I learned.

And eventually I turned one final rejection into representation by a wonderful agent at the Jane Rotrosen Agency (I’m still with the agency, though the agent who took me on left publishing about two years after I signed with her) - and I did that by learning from my rejections. When she said she found my writing style compelling and loved the connection she felt to my heroine, but that she couldn’t make the leap for representation because of X, Y, and Z, I mulled over her comments and decided that she was right on the money with the things she’d found bothersome about the submission. I wrote back and told her I really liked her suggestions and asked if she’d be interested in taking a look at the partial again, if I made some of those changes. She said she would, and so I did. Within a week of that resubmitting partial, she called me with an offer of representation. That was in May of 1999. By January of 2000 (I didn’t finish the actual manuscript until September of ‘99…though I had two other finished manuscripts under my belt, so she knew I could finish a book), I had a two book contract from Avon - and the rest is history.

So make rejection your friend. It will be part of the rest of your life as an author, even after you’re published (this blog was long enough without going into the examples of that, LOL). You might as well have it on your side!

Stay tuned tomorrow for “Using Your Gut Instincts”…I’m preparing a blog on what makes an editor say “No Thanks” - but if anyone has any other topics they’d like to see discussed, let me know in the comments section, and I’ll be glad to address them if I can.

–MRM

Question of the day: “Sir Richard de Cantor is the hero of my first Templar Knights book, Beyond Temptation. Which of my other books introduced Richard as a young man, while featuring his older brother Sir Braedan de Cantor as the hero?”