The many levels of rejection - by Lu Hersey

Most of us have to deal with rejection at some point in our writing lives. Hopefully this post will help you a little feel better about it.

Stage 1: You're starting out on your writing journey and you've just subbed your first manuscript to a few favourite agents. You've spent months, maybe years getting your draft ready and you feel very excited as you press 'send' and the sub flies out.

It's tough out there and getting an agent is hard - sadly, your favourite agents might reject you. If this is the case, you won't be the first writer it happens to, and you certainly won't be the last. The best thing to do is to start collecting your rejections like war medals, and possibly print them out ready to start wallpapering the bathroom. This process may take time. I'd also suggest not sending out your sub to too many agents at once as you may want to take any feedback on board before sending it out to your list of second favourite agents...

Stage 2: Perhaps you've struck lucky - an agent has asked to see the full manuscript! This is a very good sign, even if the same agent later rejects the full manuscript further down the line. It means you can write and somebody has acknowledged that. Read your rejection very carefully to see if you've been given any useful information, then add it to your bathroom wallpaper reject pile.

Hopefully you've now reached stage 3 - you have an agent, they like your corrections, and your manuscript is going out to publishers! Enjoy this time and don't get over excited or wish time would speed up. Sorry, but there might be further disappointment ahead. Publishers, like agents, have particular tastes. Added to that there are market trends, and a group of people called 'sales and marketing' who are paid by publishers to know about these trends and reject manuscripts, even if commissioning editors love them.

Stage 4: You've just hit the jackpot and a publisher is going to publish your book! This is definitely a time to celebrate and put the wallpapering on hold. It might be a year or more before the book comes out, so enjoy this time and come up with several more ideas for the next novel - because sadly, your days of having manuscripts rejected might not be over. If you have a two book deal, be happy in the knowledge that you will get another book published, sooner or later. Hopefully. I've known a few writers whose publishers have broken the contract - but it's rare, so don't worry about that for the time being...

Stage 5: However, if your deal is for one book only, here's a piece of sound advice -  KEEP  IN TOUCH WITH THE PUBLISHER! Make sure they like your next book idea before you write the whole thing. (I learnt this the hard way.) You may need to be very resilient. I've written 3 books since Deep Water, and so far have only a tenuous agreement (no contract signed yet) for the second one. As yet, I have no publishing offer on the third - but it's early days. And on the plus side, the rejections are getting much nicer. They love my writing, but... kind of thing.

I'm currently tweaking the fourth book, having no idea if it's any good or not, or if it is any good, whether it will ever tick the right boxes for any publisher or their sales and marketing team. At this point I have to say a massive thank you to my agent for believing in me and my writing, and still sending my books out there...

Anyway, after the latest publisher rejection, I was feeling really sorry for myself. In fact I was finding it hard not to cry. It was election day, which didn't help and I was in town to do some Christmas shopping, which didn't help either. I stomped along thinking writing is the only thing I'm good at, but if no one likes what I write, what is the point of me? That kind of thing. It was also pouring with rain and bitterly cold.

I passed a homeless man, sitting in a shop doorway, clutching a wet sleeping bag to try to keep himself warm. He was crying. I hate to see people cry, so I turned back. 'Nobody cares. Nobody f**king cares,' he said. 'I wish I was dead.' I couldn't think of anything to say to make him feel better, so just stayed to listen to him for a while. He talked about the election, and how he couldn't even vote because he hadn't got an address. We both agreed that Boris would win and his situation as a single homeless man was only going to get worse. 'It's like what Greta Thunberg said, all the promises are just window dressing - no one actually does ANYTHING!' he said.

Turned out he was an avid fan of Greta and worried about the future for the two children he had somewhere, which in his state, with no money, no place to live and a string of previous convictions, he would probably never see again. He started crying again and I felt like crying too.  'Man - look at the state of me!' he said. 'I've hardly any teeth left and nowhere even lets you in to go to the toilet. It's worse than being an animal. People like animals.'

I asked him about hostels and he told me he'd only have to do another two years (he's in his early thirties and has been homeless for two years already) before they found him a flat - 'so long as Boris doesn't make changes to the system when he gets in'. It was the best he could hope for, and he was clinging to that hope. In the end we just hugged and I said I hoped he'd get a place sooner than that. 'Thanks for listening,' he said. 'Have a good Christmas!'

I was choked. He'd taught me something very important. There are many levels of rejection and I'm incredibly lucky. I'm nowhere near the bottom of the reject pile.

If you're upset about this year's rejections, just write something else next year. It's what we writers do. And maybe send fewer Christmas cards and donate the money to a homeless charity, if you can.


Lu Hersey
luhersey.com
@LuWrites

Liminal Spaces - by Lu Hersey

The end of January feels like a liminal time. Liminal literally means threshold – leaving one place and not yet through to another.

The days are getting lighter since the winter solstice, but we’re not really through to spring, and I’ve been thinking a lot about liminal spaces. Between times, between places. In folklore and shamanic traditions, dusk and dawn are liminal times, between night and day. The seashore, hedgerows, the edge of the forest, are all liminal places. These times and places are where worlds meet, and have a strong association with magic. Places you’re most likely to encounter faeries and elementals – at times of betwixt and between.

As it happens, I’m about to move house. I’ve already packed (mostly) and I’m waiting, trying not to panic about bills, legal forms and forwarding address. I have nowhere definite to move to. I’ve also chosen this time to leave job security behind and become self-employed as a writer. In this sense I’m currently in a liminal space. 

Anyway, I was thinking about this as I walked into town early one morning this week, wrapped up in thought and feeling slightly anxious about everything. I came to the big roundabout leading to the main shopping centre in Bristol, known as the Bear Pit. It’s a place I generally avoid at night if I’m on my own – it's a place of fights and muggings down there, and I’m not a fan of underpasses at the best of times.

It was still half light, as the sun takes so long to come up in winter –  but I decided to take a risk, as it’s much quicker to go down through the Bear Pit than walk all round it. Also, it was freezing cold and I was already running late for an appointment.

As I hurried through, I suddenly came across something really extraordinary. A young woman in her nightclothes (admittedly very warm, thick nightclothes and probably with jeans underneath) was sitting up in her bed - down in the underpass. Maybe the bed was made up of pallettes, but it really looked like a proper bed, with sheets, quilts and everything. The woman was drinking a takeaway coffee and surrounded by a group of three homeless men, sitting on crates around her bed, listening to her talking animatedly about her plans for the future. She had an aura of a faerie queen surrounded by her seelie court, and seemed so full of life and enthusiasm, she was practically glowing.

I couldn’t stop, and it seemed rude to stare, so I just smiled and dropped some coins on her bedside table (seriously – she had a bedside table. Okay, maybe just another crate with a cloth on...) and walked on, thinking about liminal spaces. After all, underpasses are liminal spaces, thresholds to other places you want to get to.

I did half wonder if she was real – making her bed in the urban equivalent of a hedgerow, or a seashore – and she did look a bit like Titania (probably just the hair). But it made me think about living in a society where thousands of people, not just young women like her, end up sleeping in doorways and underpasses. In liminal places.

I’d been worrying about moving from one comfortable home and finding another – when here was someone who lived in a freezing, drafty underpass in the middle of a roundabout. Yet she was filled with life and laughter, and I was in danger of becoming a moaning minnie.

As we get closer to Imbolc (the Celtic fire festival at the beginning of February, which marks the spark of new life and creativity), I can't stop thinking about the plight of all those stuck in liminal places. I don't have any answers to the massive problem of homelessness, but am left wondering what change we can bring about, and how we can do it. Very few homeless people look as happy as that faerie queen and her seelie court.

And surely everyone deserves the basic right to cross the threshold, if they wish?

Lu Hersey
luhersey.com
thewriteroad.co.uk
@LuWrites