Why: My Rejection Tweets
I have taken to posting my rejection letter emails when I get then and they’re more than the simple, “thanks but no” replies. Why? Because people do focus only on the good. When I am traditionally published, with an agent at my side (or sans agent if I must), people will be like: yeah, she got published after taking 3 months to write a book, a month to edit it, a month to rewrite it, and got lucky because that’s what the market was looking for at the time.
People need reminded that the journey isn’t a straight line. We have highs, lows and midpoints that only have a random pattern, but we post our celebrations, the good things that happen, and that’s it.
I want to be translucent about my journey. So, for starters, I queried nonstop from the time I was 17 until I was 19. I no longer have access to the email address I used back then, but I got two pieces of advice that disrupted my journey. The first was that nobody reads series and nobody wants them so stop writing them. The second was that many people in publishing prefer the author to have a bio that includes a degree, especially a creative writing degree.
When I was 20 I was enrolled in college, ready to get a degree to prove I’m smart enough to be a published author and that I’ll do whatever it takes to get to the next place on the road to publication.
I take master classes when I can, I read books on writing and I read fiction and nonfiction constantly. I am willing to leverage my strengths of determination and constantly sparked creativity to get to my end point, then to find a pattern that works for my agent/publisher and me.
Most of all, I am always writing. I am saving up for an editor now, occasionally posting my joke tweets about seeking a glucose guardian to fund my need for paying my editor her going rates so more of my works are polished. But I have several completed manuscripts, several are polished, and I am ready to go for whatever agent/publisher decides the want me as one of their golden geese with constant writing ideas and a consistent writing schedule.
