About two years ago, I was actively writing children’s book manuscripts and trying to find a publisher or agent. One of my stories, “Parakeet and the Boring Ol’ Tweet,” was about a bird that gets tired of tweeting and goes in search of new sounds, only to find that nobody can understand her when she returns to her nest. ”
In the Spring of 2013, I sent the polished manuscript off to several editors, including a small publisher who replied with interest. The submissions editor, who I will call Pam, thought it would work well as both a traditional picture book and an iPad app. We exchanged a few e-mails, and she told me that the company was a busy start up and wouldn’t be able to focus on my project until the fall of that year. Although it was difficult to put my excitement on hold, I held onto the words in the e-mail: “Rest assured I am interested…”
When fall arrived without any contact from Pam, I sent her a check-in e-mail. She ignored it, and another, so I wrote a 3rd that informed her that I planned to send my manuscript to other publishers. I received a polite response telling me she remembered the manuscript and that she had responded. She wrote, “I do remember the submission, and that it does not meet our needs at this time. Please submit to other publishers. I wish you the best of luck.”
I don’t think of myself as a person who gives up, as somebody who turns away from a challenge or a hardship. And as an aspiring writer, I am no stranger to rejection. But something about that experience hurt me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I can admit that I gave up on writing. I just stopped. First I stopped submitting, then I stopped developing ideas and eventually, the ideas stopped coming. My idea machine had gone dormant.
I have blamed the time commitments of my family and my job and my busy life. I blamed Pam and her flakiness and her lack of regard for a hopeful writer. I blamed the industry and the children’s book markets and all the publishers who rejected my work. I blamed the timing and the lack of time. I blamed the absence of a muse. But I never thought to blame myself.
Until now. I recently finished a 30-day challenge to revive and polish a manuscript with the intention of sending it to publishers and agents. While I didn’t fully succeed in my challenge, I did make it about a third of the way through a major revision, I blogged about the experience, and I wrote this story script.
More importantly, I turned my idea machine back on and with it, a flow of ideas and an excitement about the craft of writing. I’ve learned that once I start to focus my mind on one creative *endeavor, I start to see the world in a new way and I start cranking out ideas one after the other.
In addition to my revision, my challenge yielded four new story ideas that I can’t wait to sit down and flesh out. I’ve even started researching publishers who are actively taking submissions.
I still get prickly and a little bitter when I think about the mishap with Pam. But I ultimately can’t blame her for my failure to keep writing...to keep trying. I can only blame myself. Afterall, I certainly can’t be a writer if I’m not writing. Rejection is part of the process, but only I can ultimately decide if rejection becomes failure.
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