Posts Tagged ‘rejection’

Learn to Distance Yourself From the Work

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Not that I’m able to get much real phys­i­cal dis­tance from any­thing right now.  Sometime over the week­end, my ankle decided to spon­ta­neously age 60 years.  I now limp around like some­one miss­ing a foot when I can move at all.  It’s odd—putting pres­sure on it doesn’t hurt, but when I bring my weight up off of it, it screams like it just saw one of those camo aliens in Signs.  (Shitty movie? Yes.  Did it scare the piss out of me?  Also yes.)  Anyway, if I come across as cranky to you, this is why.  My san­ity, as some­one who basi­cally spends 10 hours a day star­ing at the same four walls, hinges on my abil­ity to go for reg­u­lar walks around the park and neigh­bor­hood.  I fig­ure if my ankle doesn’t stop hurt­ing by the end of the week, I’ll be paint­ing REDRUM on the walls and chas­ing Shelley Duval with an axe.  But cop­ing with work­ing at home is a topic for another day.  Today, I’m going to talk about how impor­tant it is to learn to dis­tance your­self from your work. Emotionally.

You have got to get aloof about this shit.  You need to treat your work like a pickup artist treats women.  With mild dis­re­spect and insults.    See, if you care too much, story won’t care about you.  Story is used to being hit on a mil­lion times a day by bet­ter look­ing writ­ers than you. No, wait, that’s not what I meant at all. 

You have to not care, for real, so you can keep fail­ing.  It’s more like the Boomhauer approach to dating—get rejected and move on to the next one. You don’t invest your­self in one attempt or even one pickup line.  You’re invested in the game, not the pieces. 

Christ, how many metaphors can I throw into this mix?  Well, let’s see.

Big issue I’ve always faced is that I hate fail­ure.  Hate it like a blind man hates sub­ti­tled for­eign films.  Which is just ridicu­lous, as I’ve cov­ered on this here blog recently.  Failure is not the end; it’s the whole point.   You learn from fail­ure more than you learn from suc­cess.  Which is why so many authors who—when they start suc­ceed­ing more than they fail—have no god­damn clue what to do with them­selves.  Nothing more clue­less than a strug­gling writer who sud­denly doesn’t have to strug­gle so much.  Sophomore slump, any­one?  I expect this phe­nom­e­non on a much larger finan­cial scale is why so many Hollywood stars turn to sniff­ing moun­tains of cocaine.  Because shit, what else are you going to do with kid­die pools full of cash?   Acting school really should have a class on set­ting up your 401K is all I am saying.

If you let each rejec­tion get to you, really knock you down, even­tu­ally, you’re just going to stop get­ting up.  I’ve seen it hap­pen.  I’ve seen it hap­pen to me, sad to say.  Because I am a pathetic blob of fat and stringy ten­dons a lot of the time. Nobody ever taught me how to take a punch.  (God damn it.  Another metaphor?)

The secret is not let­ting the punch con­nect, see?  You’ve got to be stand­ing waaaay over there when it comes.  Or you have to be built like a brick shit­house so when the punch of fail­ure con­nects, you don’t even feel it.  By this, I mean you have to have mas­sively nar­cis­sis­tic lev­els of self-​​confidence.  You’re gen­er­ally born with it or not, in my expe­ri­ence.  I was not.  I’m try­ing to learn how to fake it, so that one day I might wake up and dis­cover it’s become real self-​​confidence.  I’ll let you know how that pans out.

If you’re just start­ing out in a cre­ative field with lots of rejec­tion and you’re in it to win,  you either toughen up or dis­tance your­self.  Those are your options.  If you cry every sin­gle time you get a rejec­tion let­ter?  You’re going to be either burned out or in the nut­house inside of a year, two tops.  Not that either one of those options are entirely bad.  Like some­one famous once said that I can’t be both­ered to look up,  if you can stop writ­ing, then do so imme­di­ately.  Because we’re like bad noir detec­tives in this busi­ness.  We’re get­ting our shit jumped all the time.  And very few of us saps get to make it with hot blonde dames afterward.

What’s Going On in My Life

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Both more and less than I would like is the short of it.

The long of it is, I had 3 weeks of com­pletely fal­low work time in February.  I took this as an oppor­tu­nity to try and reor­ga­nize my mar­ket­ing efforts for Clockpunk Studios.  I put together a new design, refo­cused all of my copy, and tried to show off what I’m capa­ble of in design and cod­ing.  I’m proud of the work I did.  There are some things I wish I could have spent more time on, but could not.   You should go check out that new design if you haven’t yet.  Especially check out the con­tact form.

Yesterday was a really rough day for me because the above­men­tioned new site was rejected from a major CSS gallery.  My biggest fear for a long time has been that I’m no good at what I do, and that other pro­fes­sion­als think I am a joke.  This rejec­tion brought those fears home to roost and I didn’t take it ter­ri­bly well.  I def­i­nitely take writ­ing rejec­tion eas­ier, but I think that’s because I never rely on my writ­ing to pay the bills.  Any money that gen­er­ates is a sur­prise.  Having my career seem­ingly inval­i­dated by such a small motion hurt.  And think­ing that it inval­i­dated my career was absurd anyway.

Truth is, quite a few peo­ple like the work I do for them.  I’ll never win awards, but hon­estly, hav­ing clients happy with the work is mostly all the recog­ni­tion I need.  If only I could pay the bills with client satisfaction.

While last year was a great year for me, this year has started out pretty rough.  Starting around mid December, busi­ness started drop­ping off and it’s only con­tin­ued its trend down­ward.  Possibly this is related to some kind of busi­ness trou­ble for pub­lish­ing as a whole.  I almost cer­tainly need to do more work in devel­op­ing my busi­ness out­side of that niche.  But I do like the niche!

I’ve ded­i­cated myself so thor­oughly to the busi­ness that I’m not giv­ing myself any other out­lets.  This blog has been weak lately, as you may have noticed.  I haven’t writ­ten any­thing sig­nif­i­cant this year either.  And I haven’t picked up my cam­era since June. 

This is the dark side of being an inde­pen­dent busi­ness owner.  Its suc­cess or fail­ure rests solely on your shoul­ders.   You can never sit back and coast.  And when the going gets rough, it really gets rough.  You never expect it.

I’ve got some new projects to get me through March, but beyond that, I have noth­ing lined up.  This will really be the year that deter­mines if my busi­ness has any long term poten­tial.  If things don’t turn around by July or so, I’ll start look­ing for a job along­side Sarah.

An Editor’s Perspective on Rejection

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Since I’ve taken on the gig of man­ag­ing edi­tor at Escape Pod, I’ve been relearn­ing a lot of things about being an edi­tor that I had for­got­ten in the time since clos­ing th Fortean Bureau. I’ve been think­ing a lot about rejec­tion let­ters, and rejec­tion in gen­eral, but not from my usual per­spec­tive as a writer, but now as an edi­tor. It’s inform­ing the way I think about rejec­tions as a writer as well.

It’s Not Personal

Rejection let­ters aren’t per­sonal. I find it very hard not to take them per­son­ally because by god, I wrote the story, I poured my self onto the page, and so it hurts to see that rejec­tion come in most of the time. My sto­ries are like the mind-​​prosthesies I never really asked for. And they trans­mit pain like any real limb. Er, so to speak.

Doling out rejec­tions, many to fine writ­ers whose work I love in a gen­eral sense, it’s really hit home. The rejec­tion is always for the story at hand, and it’s not about you. Great writ­ers get rejected. You will too.

I walk a very fine line in try­ing to avoid offense with my rejec­tion let­ters. How much detail does a Hugo-​​nominated writer need when you bounce his or her story? Do they need a rea­son other than, just didn’t sync up with my inven­tory needs at this time? I don’t want to be in the busi­ness of hand­ing out writ­ing advice in my rejec­tion let­ters. I tend to err on the side of less, rather than more, infor­ma­tion. Which brings me to my next point.

My Rejection is not Writing Advice

Most of the time, my rejec­tion let­ter says the same sim­ple line: “didn’t grab me.” I stole this one from F&SF, because it’s suc­cinct and a polite way of putting the truth. When I write this, it means that I did not fin­ish your story because I got bored with it. Sorry, but that’s the truth. And that’s why I don’t write what I lit­er­ally mean in the rejec­tion let­ter, because I am not a cal­lous mon­ster. When I do pro­vide feed­back as to why I am not buy­ing a story, it’s just based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ence of read­ing the story. Every edi­tor brings their own pecu­liar biases and inter­ests to the table. There are some ideas that always grab me more than oth­ers. Biological SF will win out over aster­oid min­ing every time, until you write that aster­oid min­ing story that proves me wrong.

New writ­ers should most def­i­nitely not be look­ing for writ­ing advice in their rejec­tion let­ters. Other writ­ers, and a cri­tique group, are the best way to gain this insight. It’s not the (short fic­tion) editor’s job, espe­cially not today, to cul­ti­vate the writer’s tal­ent. We sup­port your tal­ent, but we don’t have the time to fer­til­ize it. You need to turn to other sources for advice.

I can under­stand the impulse to seek feed­back from edi­tors. Writing is a soli­tary game, and it’s hard to find meth­ods with which to mea­sure your progress. How do you know if you’re get­ting close?

Again, time to be blunt. You’ll know you’re get­ting close because the edi­tor will tell you. When your rejec­tion let­ter asks for more of your work, that’s not just being polite. That’s because we think you have the chops and we’re just look­ing for the right story. When rejec­tion let­ters turn from “didn’t grab” to “didn’t work for me, for the fol­low­ing rea­sons” that’s a step up.

Trust me, the pain is only begin­ning when you’ve made those first cou­ple of sales. You’ll want more, and if light­ing has struck a lit­tle early, it can be painful to go quite a while afterwards.

At the same time, if you go from encour­ag­ing rejec­tions to a non-​​encouraging one, it doesn’t mean you’ve back­slid. It prob­a­bly just means the edi­tor has got­ten a bit too busy to give you spe­cial attention.

I Liked It, but I Didn’t Love It

I get to buy 52-​​ish sto­ries a year, and I prob­a­bly select those from ten times that many at least. This means I am not only look­ing for good sto­ries, but I’m look­ing for sto­ries that leave an impact on me. I reject a decent num­ber of good sto­ries, because I can’t use up all my slots buy­ing just good sto­ries. They have to be good, plus some. That spark is the most elu­sive thing you’ll seek as you develop as a writer.

I per­son­ally haven’t bro­ken past this phase. My rejec­tions are very often in the “this is a good story, but I didn’t like it enough to buy it” vari­ety. I sell oca­sion­ally, but this is my career wall at the moment. I think I’m close to under­stand­ing why, but I may never know, and I may never take the step for­ward. Especially if I don’t write more than I have been these past few years.

Doesn’t Fit My Needs at This Time

This is very sim­il­iar to the “like it, didn’t love it” rejec­tion let­ter. Under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, I might have, prob­a­bly would have, bought this story. But maybe it’s a bit dark in tone, and I’ve been buy­ing way too many of those lately. Maybe at the moment, I need more light-​​hearted pieces. Maybe I bought an aster­oid min­ing story shortly before you sub­mit­ted yours, and they’re too sim­i­lar in sub­ject matter.

This is the “shit hap­pens” rejec­tion let­ter. I find they’re the hard­est and eas­i­est to take at the same time. They’re frus­trat­ing, but at least you can put these to the capri­cious­ness of fate, rather than your own per­sonal skills. It helps.

So that’s a lit­tle bit of the think­ing I’ve been explor­ing regard­ing rejec­tion as I work to select sto­ries for Escape Pod. It’s def­i­nitely given me a bet­ter per­spec­tive on my own rejec­tions. If it were pos­si­ble, I would rec­om­mend every seri­ous writer find a way to read slush some day. Not only do you learn to spot the most com­mon mis­takes, you start to get a lit­tle empa­thy for that poor soul on the other side of the transom.