How Spices Can Turbo Charge Your Writing
Billie Williams, an excerpt from Spice Up Your Writing: Write to Entice
CHAPTER NINE
MUSTARD SEED - perseverance.
“If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove,”
St Matthew 17:20
Mustard Seed
You’ve read, you’ve studied, and you’ve written and submitted and submitted and submitted. The rejections start coming perhaps until you have enough to wall paper a very large bathroom. Now what? Give up? You must be no good right? Reality check: There are well over 200,000 novels published a year, plus non-fiction, poetry, anthologies of short stories, magazine articles, e-zine articles, newspaper, newsletters….What of it? Where did all these published authors come from? They all started out just like you—you can bet they got rejections.
Besides all that, you are among good company if you get a rejection. Here is just a small example of some big name authors who got more than a couple rejections in their careers.
Dr. Seuss’s first book , And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street was rejected 27 times
Tom Clancy – Hunt For Red October was rejected 12 times.
John Grisham – A Time To Kill rejected by 15 publishers and 30 agents
Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead rejected 12 times
Patricia Cornwell – Postmortem rejected 7 times
Mary Higgins Clark – first story was rejected 40 times
Scott Turrow- first novel was rejected 25 times; The Way Things Are still remains unpublished today.
JK Rowling was rejected 13 times and incidentally was rejected by all the big UK Publishers before Harry Potter’s stories were picked up.
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind was turned down by more than 25 publishers.
Daniel Defoe sent Robinson Crusoe to 20 publishers before he finally got it printed. It has since been a best-seller for over 250 years and has been translated into 10 languages.
The movie Star Wars was rejected by every movie studio in Hollywood before 20th Century Fox finally produced it.
Louisa May Alcott, writer of Little Women, was encouraged to find work as a servant or seamstress by her family.
Chicken Soup For… series had thirty-three of New York’s biggest publishing house turn the book down in the first month—Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen heard things like “Anthologies don’t sell,” “We don’t think there is a market for this book,” “We just don’t’ get it,” “The book is too positive.” And the list goes on. And you know the rest of the story. So perseverance is the key to getting your dream accepted by those outside your story.
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“Be like a postage stamp and stick to one thing until you get there.” Author unknown.
You quickly acquire a thick skin and become like the lowly mustard seed. In that tiny yellow seed is the potential for a huge tree. Not everyone will see that. Some will think, ah flavor for my favorite dish. A dash of spice nothing more. But, some editor, agent or publisher will see your potential, your job. Your missions, should you decide to accept it, is to persevere, to stick to it until you get there.
While you’re sticking, here are some things you can do. Ever and always continue to learn, to perfect your craft. If you want to write romance, read! Pick apart several Nora Roberts books, especially her earlier ones. What did she do? What did she have that some agent, editor or publisher noticed?
By studying other writer’s such as Nora Roberts you will see how they handled many things like dialogue, setting, pace, things practice has taught them. The advantage of reading the top sellers is, you will see and learn what got them to be top sellers. Read like a writer rather than a reader.
A sale or a rejection is the opinion of one person. Here, we are talking about rejection.
“Mistakes are a fact of life. It’s the response to the error that counts,” says Nikki Giovanni.
There are lessons to be learned from rejection. Look for the lesson. Did you research the market before you sent out your submission? Did you polish your submission until it squeaked? If there are comments on the rejection, heed them. You don’t necessarily have to believe them or make any suggested changes, but at least give them due consideration. Editors know what they like in their publications or books. If you want to be published by that particular editor, heed their message.
“Don’t send out one manuscript and then sit back and wait for results,” says Peggy Teeters in You Can Get Published. She recommends sending out a filler or two every week until your next idea is begging to be written. Get into the habit of keeping the writer you writing and submitting. Rejection will lose its sting and your chance for a sale will increase.
A few reasons you may be rejected:
~ exceeded word count/limit
~ material is too trite
~ material is too wordy
~ your story lacks good plot or theme
~ your story sounds contrived
~ lead doesn’t grab readers attention
~ article needs more facts/research
~ similar piece, current or recently published
~ subject over done
“Writing isn’t a test, you can’t fail, and there are no wrong answers,” says Bonni Goldberg in Room to Write. The only difference between a weed and a flower is judgment, just as the only difference in rejection and acceptance is in the opinion of one person.
Writer’s block may be triggered by that rejection letter or you may be trying too hard, expecting to be perfect. Let me clue you in, there is no such thing as perfect. According to Judy Reeves in A Writer’s Book Of Days, “Writer’s block is one of those terms like dysfunctional or co-dependent, that has been used to label so vast a range of symptoms that it’s lost any real meaning.” You may only need to refill what has been emptied according to The Artist Date as mentioned earlier. If you have no ideas what to do, check out Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Date book a companion volume to the one mentioned earlier, in it she gives you 365 writing prompts and things to do. There are many books on Writer’s Block and many ideas about what it is. Most of them agree it’s a call to stop, look and listen. Victoria Nelson, author of On Writer’s Block says, “…inability to write means that the unconscious self is vetoing the program demanded by the conscious ego.”
Analyze that and it harbors a seed, a germ of an idea that perhaps a new approach, a new way of looking at your work, a change may be necessary in your thinking.
As Reeves says, “…writing happens word by word, and novels get written scene by scene.” I’ll add sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph it will get done.
Again expectations—fear of success—confrontation either with the page and your ideas or the finished product and what other’s may think.
So what kind of fears, besides fear of success, could possibly interfere with your writing?
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Now you can get all three of Billie's books – “Writing Wide: Exercises in Creative Writing,” “Spice Up Your Writing: Write to Entice,” and “Characters in Search of an Author” – as an instant download for a special discount. All the details are here: http://filbertpublishing.com/triple.html
