Rejecting the Rejecter...

The theme these days on "A Good Blog is Hard To Find" is rejection or critiques. Or both. I’ll start with rejection and maybe I’ll find a way to get to the other. By far the most difficult rejection I ever had was from an agent, and if I’d believed her, I would never have written another word. It was a rejection of stunning cruelty, but I rejected her rejection.

It was back in 1994. She came to see a play I’d written or maybe I’d sent her a query. Anyway, she wanted to meet for coffee. She had read and loved an early draft about growing up on the gridiron of college football. It was a kind of GREAT SANTINI from the teenage daughter's point of view.

She thought it needed a good editor, though, a freelance editor. I agreed. I had no idea how to shape this story of being a coach’s daughter into a book. I had bombarded my writing group with it for three years, and a shaky first draft had emerged.

So I took this agent’s suggestion and the editor she recommended. The editor was very reasonably priced, and it helped to have a careful reader who knew nothing about my life as a football daughter, who’d moved regularly with her itinerant coaching family in search of the opportunity to win ball games.

I also quit my job as an ESL teacher in East Los Angeles. I couldn’t write my novel, teach full time, and raise a family. Our kids were four and six. I worked on my novel, OFFSIDES, while they were in school and on the weekends. I revised the book for another year. I would write three or four chapters, share them with the editor, and she would fax back notes or comments or questions. It was long before the days of email. But I felt I was on the right track. Chapter 41 became chapter one when my alter-ego character decided she was not going to move to another football town again. The idea of beginning with a conflict was something new to me as I tended hang out in voice and scene without a lot of plot.

Anyway, after a year of revising and reshaping it into a book, I sent it back to the agent. She didn’t respond and she didn’t respond. Then one summer night in August I found it on my doorstep. She had mailed it back with a letter saying something to effect of “I don’t know what you did to your story, but it’s just awful. The voice is gone. And where is the dad?” Trembling, I looked at her notes in the manuscript. They had stopped at page 80. She hadn’t even read the whole book. Though, I’d taken her advice and the editor she recommended and did everything she asked me to do for more than a year, she had stopped reading on page 80.

Let's just say it was a grief-stricken Jack Daniels night, and I think I will just leave it at that. That is another essay. But this is how I rejected her rejection. A week or so later, a thought occurred to me while I was bathing the kids. This was the thought: “She is wrong. She is wrong. She is wrong.” And this was not denial speaking. I just knew she was wrong.

So I took the book, all five hundred pages of it, and I read it again with a cold editor’s eye, and I systematically cut one hundred pages. I was ruthless and killed everything that I repeated or did twice or hit the same note too long. I honed and sharpened and got to the point a whole lot quicker. I soon realized it was way too flabby, so I cut those one hundred pages. Then I sent it to another agent. That agent took it and she sold it to William Morrow within one month.

Six months later, Diane Keaton optioned OFFSIDES for a film with Jim Henson Productions and we spent the next three years in the Hollywood mill. That, too, is another essay. The New York Public Library named, OFFSIDES, one of the best books for the Teen Age in 1997. It was before the dawn of Young Adult, and my editor at William Morrow at the time told me, “If you publish this young adult, it will be the death knell of your career,” so it was published as literary fiction.

Sadly, nothing came out of the film and even though, OFFSIDES, had great reviews it went out of print within a few years. You can find it for a buck on Amazon. But that agent who rejected me contacted my screenplay agent at the time and asked, “Can I have her next book?”

I would see this agent from time to time at parties or literary salons on the West Coast. We were always very polite. I didn’t tell her I thought of tee-peeing her house or screaming like a banshee at her front door, because I didn’t do any of those things. I just repeated to myself. “She is wrong, she is wrong, she is wrong.”

Now I absolutely believe in readers and feedback and criticism to make a book better and stronger. I would be nowhere without my group of close and trusted readers in the early stages of a manuscript, who tell me truth. But I don’t believe in cruelty when a writer is finding the story and finding her voice. I was a young novelist, and it was my very first novel, and this agent had set herself up as a kind of encouraging mentor and then said, "Never mind." But it was probably the best lesson I could have learned - to trust my own voice and not to quit no matter what an agent had decreed.

And a word about critiques...I teach creative writing now at the University of Alabama Birmingham, and I have taught for years in freelance workshops, and I do writing workshops for kids in schools. I was lucky enough to have a professor in college who taught me everything I know about teaching because she modeled such excellent teaching. Her name was Mary Jane Harvill, and she made us believe in the possibility of ourselves as artists. It was an acting class – not even a writing class. But we had to go on stage and become these characters.

I played Blanche with a boy who would have made a knockout Blanche, and I definitely would have been a much better Stanley. But we had fun. Mary Jane made us laugh and find joy in creating characters, and even when we were awful, and we were awful, it was never about humiliation, but it was about being better – reaching down inside and finding something new to make the characters work.

I don’t allow my writing workshops to be anything but supportive and generous places to discover how to make the work better. We ask the hard questions, but I hope no writer ever leaves my workshop lacerated or doomed the way I felt that night when my first novel arrived on my doorstep like a body bag oozing failure.

It’s listening to the voice inside and keeping the critics at bay and revising and reshaping to find ways to make the stories sing.

Kerry Madden is author of the Maggie Valley Trilogy, published by Viking Children's Books. The trilogy includes Gentle's Holler (2005), Louisiana's Song (2007) and Jessie's Mountain (2008), set in the heart of Appalachia in the Smoky Mountains. Her first novel, Offsides, was a New York Public Library Pick for the Teen Age in 1997. Her book Writing Smarts, published by American Girl, is full of story sparks for young writers. Her latest book, Harper Lee: Up Close, published by Viking, made Booklist's Ten Top Biographies of 2009 for Youth. www.kerrymadden.com

Instructive Criticism

by Mary Alice Monroe

For many of us, criticism is hard to swallow and oftentimes uncomfortable to dish out as well. Yet, it’s part of the writing process. Writers rejoice at the positive reviews and cringe at the negative ones. The phrase, “If you can’t stand the heat stay out of the kitchen” comes to mind. A writer must develop a thick enough skin to be able to receive the criticisms, then take a deep breath and set them aside—both positive and negative ones. During the writing process, the only critic to listen to resides in your own mind.

A critique, however, is not a review. It is a sacred trust. When a writer asks a particular person or group to critique her manuscript, she is offering her unfinished work in progress up for comments that will, hopefully, make her book the best it can be. This is a risky moment. The writer is vulnerable. It is important to seek out a critique from a person or a group adept at “instructive criticism.”

The goal of the critique is to instruct, not destruct. As the one offering a critique, it’s important to remember that this is not your book. Neither is it is a book being written by committee. It is your obligation to be open minded and fair. If for any reason you feel you can’t be-- you don’t like the time period, the genre, the tone, the writing style--better to pass on it than attack it. Or worse, if you’re jealous of the talent on the pages, decline. I’ll never forget the woman who only wrote, “Did you ever think of doing something other than writing?” on my manuscript. I was young and unpublished then, but I had the confidence to quit that critique group. By the way, that woman was never published. She’s probably writing one-star-wonders on Amazon.

When I receive a manuscript, I ask the writer what it is she especially wants from me. Sometimes, she won’t know how to answer that and will stutter, “Everything!” But maybe all she wanted was a grammar or fact check. In any case, I take the responsibility seriously.
If I’m asked to do an “everything” critique of a manuscript, I don’t write madly on the pages, I rarely correct grammar or rewrite a sentence. Instead, I look at the big picture. I take notes on separate paper since I sometimes change my thoughts as the novel unfolds. When I finish, I carefully review my copious notes. It’s time now to reflect. Don’t shoot from the hip. Remember your words can hit like bullets. Below are a few suggestions on how to offer an instructive critique.

First, offer what you liked about the book. A critique doesn’t mean merely negative criticisms. Point out what really worked. Praise lavishly. Next, choose the single, main point that you feel the author should address. Give a specific example then offer suggestions how she might improve it. You may have found several problems with the manuscript but don’t bring them all up. Be choosy. Too many can be overwhelming for the fragile author. The last thing you should do is discourage the writer. She came to you for a helping hand. Your critique has the power to pull her up or knock her down. Finally, remind the writer that this is simply your opinion. To take it with a grain of salt. In the end, it is her book. Her name goes on it, not yours.

Offering instructive criticism should leave the writer feeling inspired to get back to work, to believe in her book. It’s simple. Offer criticism in the manner that you’d like to receive it.

My mother taught me that if you can’t say something nice, don’t’ say anything at all. In the case of criticism, nice means open minded, considerate, and instructive. I think that works for every area in our life!

Mary Alice Monroe is known for her intimate portrayals of women's lives. She has served on the faculty of numerous writer's conferences and retreats and is a frequent speaker. Her books have achieved several best seller lists, including SIBA, USA Today, and the NY Times. In 2008 Monroe was awarded the SC Center for the Book Award for Fiction.

IT'S SHOW TIME FOLKS!

I think I'm supposed to write about rejection. Or maybe that was reviews. But it's rejection that comes to mind. More specifically, it's rejection when someone puts their talent out there publicly on the line for everyone to see. And ummm, review. And ummm, reject if they feel well like it. Publicly. Basically - to be open to public humiliation to the highest degree. 

The greatest jump for me as that quiet introverted child was to put my talent out there in public in a major way in the third grade. My talent at the time was piano. I practiced and practiced over and over. If I remember correctly my piano teacher helped me choose the piece and Lord help me, while I can hear the somber tune in my mind I certainly don't remember the title. Perhaps if she had helped me choose something that was a happy diddy - but noooooo. Not only did I cause the entire class in 3rd grade to walk duck style out of the room to the only room with a piano, which caused quiet a set-up for me to fail if you ask me. You have to consider that expectations were flying sky high with all that enthusiasm for walking through the cold halls, then to a dark, dusty room where the sacred piano sat in an unused corner. I remember the darkness in the room. Remember those children standing against the wall in the dark, lined up there like it was a firing squad, and commanded to play attention while I played. The teacher hushed them and then told me to begin and within the first few unhappy, dramatic, notes - the children began to giggle. First one and then another. And no matter how much the teacher hushed them, the giggles spread like wildfire and continued. And I remember my frozen eight year old back as my fingers continued playing in spite of the unwelcome noises behind me. When my piece was completed, I closed the piano and then walking with these same turncoat cutthroats otherwise known as my precious classmates, back to our room where I was solidly beat in a landslide vote by a tap dancer in a tutu. The results of the talent show competition were read off on slips of white paper. One by painful one. The results were marked publicly on the black board in white chalk. I received two votes. One of them was mine. The rest were for the tap dancer. Walking home from school that day was no doubt a painful, learning experience. Shortly thereafter I quit piano lessons much to the dismay of my mother. I refused to go. She consented. Later I gave her a real hard time about this for relenting and allowing me to quit. Bless the heart of mother's every where trying to make the right decisions all the time for their depressed, morose, artistic writer children. I think I buried my pain somewhere between Gilligan's Island and Flipper. Thanks be to the pain relief of brainless television particular during the age prior to reality TV. Who needs reality when you are eight and have just had a public humiliation to last a lifetime. 

All that true stuff to say this. I may have quit piano lessons ultimately but those scales really paid off because boy can I type fast.  And even at eight- I kept a stiff upper lip, kept on hitting those keys when those behind my back were laughing because my particular genre wasn't their cup of tea. 

And when it came time to vote, I believed in myself to scratch my own name down on that white paper. 

Rejection? Oh yeah, I've had my share. But my fingers are on the keys, there's a music in my ears, and I'm just gonna keep playing my song. 

(River Jordan is a critically-acclaimed literary author. Her most recent novel Saints In Limbo, has been hailed as a Southern Gothic Masterpiece by Paste Magazine. She has recently completed a new work of fiction due out September 2010. River lives in Nashville with her husband Owen Hicks.  The author no longer plays the piano but folks say she types likes nobody's business. The author can be contacted through her website at http://www.riverjordan.us  )

“Critiques”

For many years now I have been reviewing books. In truth I had been reviewing for a long time before I ever thought about writing a book of my own. But when I became an author I began to meet some of the people whose books I had reviewed. It was an uncomfortable feeling to say the least. Still in most cases I had been kind, and I had always been honest.

What I stress to people is that a review is just one person’s opinion. It is no better than anyone else’s, but it is also no worse. Plus if you are a professional book critic someone pays you to review and that is a plus. Your work gets seen by more and more people and you intentionally or not gain a lot more influence. I never realized this until I began reviewing books for “The Huffington Post.” Suddenly people were making comments about my reviews and they were being picked up by numerous other locations.

Should someone be upset by something I write? I hope not. I never set out to be cruel or harmful. Still sometimes I just have to say I don’t get the style of writing, the content, or the plot. But even then I try to balance it all with something I do like.

Last week I taught five classes of memoir writing at the “South Carolina Writers Workshop.” I also was asked to “critique” samples of two writers’ work. Other people on the faculty at the Workshop also did critiques. I had people in my classes who couldn’t concentrate on what I was saying because they were so worried about their upcoming “critiques.”

I really did lecture my students about not making it the ultimate determiner of their writing skills. They all smiled and said they wouldn’t but then I saw some of them after they had received their critiques and they were devastated. In one case there had been a lot of positive things said and one negative thing. The person could only remember the negative aspect.

We writers are fragile people. We never are overconfident about our work. We just know there are hundreds of flaws which could be pointed out at any time. When we go to writing groups and get critiqued with our hearts are on our sleeves. This places a huge burden on the person doing the critiquing. They need to be fair, honest and most of all encouraging.

One student told me that she went to a writing seminar and the instructor said up front that no positive comments would be allowed. It all had to be negative so they could all grow. I wouldn’t have lasted in a group like that for five minutes. Negatives should always be balanced with some positive. Who wants to destroy someone like that!

The truth is most writers are better than they think they are. Both of the works I critiqued showed real promise. As a matter of fact one was excellent and I can see a publisher grabbing it up (when it is finished). I told the writer over and over it was good and he kept asking me to tell him the bad. I finally pointed out some nitpicky things and he seemed satisfied. I would rather have just gone over with him the best things he had done.

Being a critic or a critique-er is a huge responsibility. People place their writing careers in your hands and wait for your comments. I feel you can be honest and still be encouraging. That is how I would want to be treated and in this arena “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” certainly applies.

Jackie K. Cooper will be teaching a “Memoir Writing” course at Kennesaw State on November 7 for the Georgia Writers Association, and will be a moderator/panelist Sunday, November 8, at the Dahlonega Book Festival.

The Universe is On Your Side by Mystery Blogger

Every morning I get a note from “the universe.” I’ve always had this idea that life on Earth was like an extended Outward Bound program. Just an exercise, really and not to be taken too seriously. I also enjoy the idea that all sorts of angels and other cohorts from “the universe” are watching us, cheering us on and giving us a leg up when we need it.

Anyway, that’s why I signed up for notes from the universe at TUT Adventure’s Club. I get one each weekday morning in my inbox, and while I know they are written by Mike Dooley, the TUT founder, I like to think of them as messages coming directly from my own personal angelic cheering team. Time and again, my note from “the universe” is exactly what I need to hear that day, I thought today’s note was especially appropriate for writers:

“Any attempt to measure one's progress in life with an assessment of their present physical surroundings, or even a panoramic glance at their life and times to date, is just plain "whacked." The reason being is that each journey, kind of like a haircut, should never be fully appraised until it's complete. Otherwise, one might mistaken a miracle-in-the-making for a setback, loss, or the "wet-look."
Your cosmic barber and de-whacker, The Universe

Lately at A GOOD BLOG IS HARD TO FIND we’ve been talking about rejection and reviews. Every writer is going to face scads of rejection along the way as well a lot of criticism, some useful, some not so much. But what we all have to remember is both things are just part of a rich and ultimately satisfying journey of growing into the writers that we ultimately want to be.
Don’t isolate an instance of rejection (or even a spate of rejections) and let it make you feel less than fabulous. Instead try to see rejection or criticism not as a stop sign, but just one of many signposts on your way to the bestsellers’ list or whatever your benchmark for writer success might be.

Guest Blogger: Jennie Bentley

As a published writer, I often get asked how long I’ve been writing. The honest answer to that, of course, is ‘forever.’ The alternative answer is about four years, from the time I decided to get serious about getting published until now. I started the manuscript for “A Cutthroat Business” in 2005 and finished it in 2006, found an agent that same year, and by 2007, I had a three book contract with Berkley Prime Crime. For the past couple years, I’ve been busy cranking out a book in the Do-It-Yourself home renovation series every six months while trying to find “A Cutthroat Business” a home. Which—hallelujah!—we have finally done, and it will be in stores everyone in June 2010.
The whole process went rather fast, and I only sent out 42 queries before I found an agent, so I can’t really claim to be an expert on rejection, even with the dozen or so no’s from big houses that “A Cutthroat Business” had to endure before we placed it with someone who loves it the way we do. Still, there’s a short period in my past I don’t talk about often, mostly because thinking about it makes me want to kick myself. Hard.
Once upon a time, back about ten years ago or so—before I had kids—I thought I wanted to be a romance writer. Largely because someone had told me it was ‘easy’ to get published in romance.
I’ll take a short break here, to let you wipe your tears and catch your breath from laughing yourself hoarse.


Yeah, we all know it isn’t ‘easy’ to get published in any genre, don’t we? I was young and naive, though, so I believed it. I joined RWA, I joined my local organization (the Music City Romance Writers), I entered their annual contest, I won their annual contest... it all seemed very—dare I say it?—easy. So I thought to myself, maybe I should just send out a query for this book while I’m at it. Now that it was a contest winner, and everything...
I should perhaps mention that at this point there existed no actual book. The contest called for the first chapter of a romance. I was just dipping my toe into the water and hadn’t started writing anything yet, but I wanted to enter the contest—it was a chance to let someone other than my reluctant husband read my writing—so I came up with an idea and two characters, and wrote a first chapter. I didn’t do anything more with it, just wrote it, entered it in the contest, and sat back and waited. By the time it won, I still hadn’t written another word of the manuscript. But when I got the idea to query, the guidelines on the publisher’s website said to send a synopsis, so I wrote one. For the book I hadn’t written. And then I sent that out—mentioning the contest-win in the query letter, of course—and sat back to wait some more.
Stupid much?
In retrospect, the most amazing thing about the whole situation was probably that I got a response at all. And not only was it a response, but it was a two page, personalized response, detailing everything that was wrong with the plot of my (non-existent) manuscript and making suggestions for what I could do to deal with the problems.
Sounds great, right? I had an editor at the biggest publishing company in the world liking my synopsis enough to provide two pages of personalized feedback. I should have been dancing.
You’ve already guessed what I did, haven’t you?
Yep, you’re right. I did... nothing. I put the letter into the rejection file that I had to make especially for it, I ate some ice cream, and I stopped writing for a few years. Yes, I started having kids right about then, so I had an excuse, in all the diaper changes and middle-of-the-night breast feedings, but the real reason was that I’d been rejected.
I can laugh about it now, because I know that a two page personalized rejection letter isn’t really a rejection at all. And I can laugh about it because things worked out anyway; I made it into print a few years later. It wasn’t the end of the line for me. But it’s a sour laugh, because I also realize that I could have been published eight years ago if I’d just taken the time to familiarize myself with the business I was so eager to enter. Just a little bit of research, and I might have seen the rejection letter for what it was: an opportunity, a foot in the door, and not much of a rejection at all, really.
So there you have it. The story of my first rejection. The moral of the story being that it helps to know what you’re getting into before you’re putting it out there.
And that’s the view from this writer’s desk.


Bente Gallagher is the author of the Do-It-Yourself home renovation mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime under the pseudonym Jennie Bentley, and—come June 2010—the Savannah Martin real estate mysteries from PublishingWorks as herself. As of right now, Jennie is the only one with a website: http://www.jenniebentley.com/

Guest Blogger: Laura Benedict

The first non-academic criticism of my writing was scathing, and it came long before I became a published novelist.

My Prince Charming had whisked me away from the fleshpots of St. Louis and my corporate job at the Mega Beer Company to settle with him on his family’s dairy farm in West Virginia. “Write,” he said. “Let’s make your dream of being an author come true.” What a sweetheart he was, and is.

I’d never lived in the country. Every time I stepped out our door to plod—in my spanking new LL Bean boots—through the muddy yard to the car, or shut the bedroom window against the odor of the aged cow manure that had been spread over the cornfield a few hundred feet from the house, the theme song from “Green Acres” started up in my head. No lie. But I wasn’t miserable. It was an adventure, and I came to love the place—especially after I dug and planted my own flower garden, had a baby, and broke my arm crashing into our storm door as I was running from a feral bitch whose puppy had strayed into our yard. We were there six years, and I’d move back in a heartbeat.

Along the way, I tried to make sense of the unfamiliar culture around me. Having grown up in Louisville, Kentucky, I knew southern, but not country. So I wrote essay after essay about my new life. The men in the area particularly puzzled me. They called me “ma’am” a lot. At first it freaked me out, but now I kind of miss it. The essays eventually got picked up for radio by WVTF, the NPR affiliate out of Virginia Tech that covers vast parts of Virginia, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

One of my favorite essays to write was about the evening that Oscar, a neighbor, came to inquire if any of his cattle had wandered through a busted fence and onto our farm. My husband was upstairs, and I’d just gotten out of the shower, and put on a robe. When I answered the door, there was Oscar. “Have you seen my cows, ma’am?” he said.

The situation was funny. And vaguely mortifying. Particularly because Oscar was kind of cute, and was known to be a bit of a flirt. But everyone knew he adored his wife and eight hundred children, so it was a safe kind of funny.

Here are excerpts from the letter that a Mrs. M. C***** sent to the radio station in response to the essay:

“Dear Laura, [note the inappropriately familiar tone] I am seated at my word processor, still nauseous from listening to your essay on public radio….It is obvious that you have taken text from an x-rated adult movie, though I am quite sure that you are much too well bred to have ever seen one, and therefore have not the vaguest idea of what it all means. Your line of getting out of the tub to answer the door, finding a Nordic man stripped to the waist and fresh from sweat, gives you away….Of course, you continue your ego-massaging essay, never considering that your audience may be able [sic] ascertain that sexual fantasy is not only the domain of junior-high school girls, or that your transparent whiter-than white exterior sugar coat of social elite is cracked; your ridiculous fantasy of self-aggrandizement shows, and while it may be the stuff of lady-like wet dreams, it is not entertaining or enriching to your listeners.”

She goes on to make mention Freud stroking his beard and smiling. I think the station’s news director was right to call her on all the sexual subtext in her own letter when he kindly wrote a response in my defense.

There’s one thing I like about this letter: Mrs. M. C***** doesn’t hold back on the moral harping. She gets right in there and calls me names. She’s so delightfully personal and insulting! I like to take this letter out and read it when I stumble onto some squealy Amazon or blogger review. A puny “not recommended” or “will not read anymore from this author” can’t compare to “self-aggrandizing” or “…sugar coat of social elite is cracked”—it doesn’t even matter that I’m not even sure what she means. It’s just darned creative, don’t you think?

But, seriously—Keep in mind that people are always the stars of their own shows. Their criticism—educated or not—usually has way more to do with them than it does with the work they’re criticizing. Remember that, and you’ll be able to laugh at the worst that the Mrs. M. C*****s of the world can fling at you.

Laura Benedict is the author of the thrillers Isabella Moon and Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts. Sometime after Halloween, the second volume of Surreal South: An Anthology of Short Fiction, which she edited with her husband Pinckney Benedict, will be available from Press 53. Now when she writes essays, she calls them blogs and posts them at Notes From the Handbasket and Wardrobe by Sam.