Brooke Hecker: “Rejection Is Normal”

This is the main thing to understand when you’re just starting out

Wake Up and Write is an advice column from Moms Don’t Have Time to Write. Today, we have Brooke Hecker—author of the children’s book, Letters from My Tooth Fairy — who shared writing advice on the podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, hosted by Zibby Owens.

“There were two lessons that I needed the most.”

“One: rejection was not something that I’d ever had to experience because I worked in a corporate world. That’s just not the way it worked. You did your work. You moved up. Everything was fine. We went out with this book first, and it rhymed. My letters had rhymed. The book rhymed. I absolutely loved it. My agent had told me, “Rhymes don’t sell as well. Would you consider rewriting the whole thing in prose?” I was like, “Well, I love it. Can we try it first like this?”

She tried it. It got rejected across the board. It was the first time in my life I had been told no. I just assumed, well, I tried. I guess it’s just not going to happen. My agent was like, ‘No, no, no. Now we go out to the next batch of people.’ I rewrote it. We went out with it again. When it sold, it was a very good lesson because I was ready to just walk away.

The other thing is patience. It takes a long time. It’s all self-discipline. We have a mutual friend. She writes. She churns out five, six books a year. That’s because she sits in her office and has the time and dedicates it and gets it all done. Not a lot of people work that way. That’s been a lesson too, of trying to get the self-discipline to do something where you’re accountable for yourself. It’s all about you.”