Maybe I'm Crazy, but the Word "No" Made me a Better Writer

Rejected writer. That was the name of my first blog. My daughter, Maizie, set it up for me ironically on Tumblr and we laughed. Upon thinking about it, really dissecting what it meant, I decided to own it. It defines me. It made me the writer I am today.

I’ve been writing since third grade if you count my very first booklet about a comical rainy day. Inspired by Grandmom’s gift of stationery supplies, I was intrigued by the hole punch and strung a stack of paper together with yarn.

In sixth grade, my friend Debby and I collaborated and were astonished to win the school’s hobby contest with our stapled April and Cherry “booklets.” After all, our friend Annette had her big, shiny motorcycle there! Besides writing, Debby had quite a drawing talent, especially horses. I still think of her and wish we could reconnect.

In eighth grade, I began a Sherri Whitman teen mystery series I wrote even past high school. Ideas formed in history class one day, based on a few words on the board. For one, Richmond, Virginia--and Bam!-- I had the setting even though I had never stepped foot there.
(Not until I happened to meet my Navy husband and we visited his family there often! Talk about writing your destiny.)

During junior high, friends would devour my Sherri books as soon as I set down the pen, sometimes chapter by chapter on the bus ride home. Thankfully one gal served as a brilliant editor and corrected my grammar mistakes; you know like “could of” instead of “could’ve.” Those lessons still stick with me today.

in 2011, I dug out the Sherri series during a hurricane power outage. Maizie was twelve and she got a kick out of them too. She wants me to publish those next, which is fitting because a more mature installment of those mysteries was my first ever submission in 1986, At the fragile, impressionable age of twenty-one,
it also spurred my first set of rejections.

"Too short."
"More like a novelette,"
"Not what we are looking for."
Bruised but not knocked down, I lengthen the story and submitted to as many teen/young adult publishing houses I could find.

Scholastic was the only one to give constructive critique beyond a form letter, even tossing in two young-adult paperbacks to read as examples! I'm awed and grateful they took me seriously. I've always loved ordering from their catalog sheets at school, and since their gracious reply to my manuscript, they've been even more dear to my heart, especially as a mom. I enjoyed sharing my kiddos' enthusiasm for book fairs and manned a few shifts.

I can’t help but think if I hadn’t received constant refusals from publishers and periodicals over the last thirty years, I never would've had the desire to improve my craft-- and certainly my book, The Pearly Gates Phone Company wouldn’t exist!
I thank God for self-publishing and high school alum, Mary, who paved the way and showed me the ropes. She became my literary lifeboat.

In the 70s and 80s, I wrote short stories in high school. One became the futuristic time capsule mystery Chronicle of the Century-- and in 1981, my ruthless yet klutzy, insecure agent, Galaxy O'Jordan from Behind Frenemy Lines emerged from 11th grade Journalism class when we had to create characters and the last scene of a T.V. script about Russian and American spies.

A bit later in 86-88, despite the naysayers of the magazine world, I’d churned out a few for Redbook's Short Story contests as well, but never won. However, keeping the stories has a prize in itself. One called "Parlor Game" is featured in my book of time-twisting tales, The Epochracy Files--When Edison Jones is immersed in his fantasy books, he finds himself at a party he rather not attend...and stumbles upon an innovative amusement. But he must play wisely, for his life depends on it!

When my kids were born in the 90s, I began writing holiday newsletters, keeping my tools sharpened with family antics. More fervently in the early 2000s, my writing took a turn when I was bent on crafting creative nonfiction for a certain periodical about blessings and amazing coincidences. I’d snail mail the manuscripts, hold my breath, then receive the letdown via a polite form letter stapled to my story. I learned to dread those bulky self-addressed suckers.

The first short I mailed in was my 2000 submission, “Point of Sail,” then called “Smooth Sailing,” a mind-blowing result from my first stab at prayer at age twelve--despite my grouchy pre-teen mood and unfair circumstance.
My next attempt was a 2002 primitive, long and complicated edition of my dad's call from Heaven, which left me flabbergasted and was so remarkable, it was hard to tell in a condensed version. It's the main story in my book of the same name--and appears in Chapter 10 as: “The Pearly Gates Phone Company,” then called “Hello from Hippie Heaven.”
After each no, I’d bum out, take a break and live life, but whenever inspiration hit, I’d bang out the next spiritual short, pray, fingers crossed, and submit again. It was a continuous loop, a very slow vicious circle.
Einstein said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Well then, I must be crazy.

But hey, maybe I'm onto something, because a few years ago my rejections bumped up to first class. I received two handwritten notes! Maybe because of better revisions. Rejection ignites the fire to improve. It fuels defiance. In 2014, an editor’s scribbling followed a fresher, tighter remake of “Hippie Heaven”, then called “A Call from Heaven.”

“I like it,” he said. “But it’s more of an essay. Do you have anything different?”

Boy, did I! Having just finished writing an earlier version of the wacky empty-nester tale, “The Pancake Parable” (then called “Spatula Story,”) a comic-tragedy when an old, beloved gizmo breaks, I polished it up and sent it out immediately. It was quirky. It couldn’t get any more different than that. I had a good feeling about this one.

Except... another fat bundle arrived with a sprawled note attached, this one a bit harder to decipher. I love how the guy even added a self-depreciating whack at his own penmanship. : )
My cousin Stacie helped me break the code:

“I like it, but still sounds more like an essay,” his hieroglyphics said this time. “I don’t see a deeper meaning and how it can help readers.”

Hmm, a deeper meaning? Maybe dads view the empty-nest differently. His comments revved up another round of revisions. I added a fresher style and more dialogue, but what about that depth he wanted? Suddenly I was lit with an epiphany and it became the glue. Now I can’t even fathom the story without it. I mailed off the new version right away but never heard a thing. I read somewhere later that writers should not send a revised piece back to an editor unless solicited. Oops, rookie mistake, I guess.

Regardless of the sound of crickets, I felt so close now I could almost smell the ink hot off the printing press.
Still, something bothered me. What was I doing wrong? My work seemed similar to their story style. I’ve been an avid fan for thirty years, but the frustration of not being good enough made me mad. I chucked the latest issue across the room, tempted to cancel my subscription. I felt guilty for acting like a brat, yet something kept me connected.
I took a break. Since I was already enrolled in college working toward a degree, I signed up for a creative writing class just for fun and focused my attention elsewhere.

Now ironically, this magazine is known for Norman Vincent Peale's motto, "the power of positive thinking," and it must really be ginormously powerful because I could never quite give up! I polished up “The Call from Heaven” and tightened it with a vise, giving it more life with additional dialogue. At last, the perfect whimsical name came to me. After submitting the solo story of “The Pearly Gates Phone Company” online to their spin-off magazine, an editor called! Within an hour!
He was very interested. He was going to pitch it at the next meeting. I soared! This was it, the BIG TIME! I swirled around the kitchen. The Editor would let me know in three weeks.

Except... he did not. Emailing him, I discovered the truth. They didn’t want stories dealing with death. Really, like now all of a sudden? No fair!

“Do you have any lighthearted miracles in 150 words or less?” the online editor asked instead. “Something like your pinwheels spinning without wind and your "heavenly" stamped bank receipt, only not death related.”

Hmmm. I reached deep into my thinking cap and wrote a blurb, whittling down as much as possible. Interestingly, it’s a very challenging yet great writing exercise. I launched my tasty morsel into his writing space only to get shot down. Again. I went back to the drawing board and after each, “Sorry, it’s not what I’m looking for,” decided to take a break for a while. It was frustrating not being able to please these publications. Besides, I had lots of homework to do.

Yet, every so often, I’d carve out more. “SOS-” when a plea for help comes true. “Eviction Notice--have you ever kicked the devil to the curb?” “God loves a Fearful/Cheerful Giver--are you skeptical of scams or do you give freely? ” and “Hummingbird Hangout,--a huge miracle of small proportions!” Soon these filled my document list, but they just didn’t have the wow factor he was looking for.
I wanted to scream, “Take the Pearly Gates, it’s the best one. You liked it before!” But by this time he wasn't answering my emails.

I was beginning to believe those memes on Facebook; you know the ones saying something like, “When you knock on a door, and it doesn’t open, it’s not yours.”

Not long after receiving those hopeful handwritten rejections in 2014, we were visiting my husband's family for his mom's memorial service. I tried cheering up my sister-in-law. She was feeling bad for not being there the moment her mother died, even though she was about to head over and had been there all week despite a full-time job. I recited the sentence from “Pearly Gates” about how guilt is deceiving, convincing us we can never do enough. She and my husband agreed it was true. I related humorous funeral stories that happened when my family members died and it made them laugh. ( Those anecdotes became Chapter 18: "The Funeral Follies." )

Also during our visit, I lamented my latest publishing blows and close calls.

“I want to be a real writer, but it looks like it will never happen,” I relayed over coffee.
“You don’t have to be published to be a real writer,” my sister-in-law said, to the effect of, “You write, therefore you’re a writer.”
She was right! It was a relief to take the edge off my goal.

Besides, I was in good company. Just about every author or artist got the nopes before making it. This includes JK Rowling, my all-time favorite— Judy Blume-- and even the Beatles! According to litrejections.com, Beatrix Potter took matters into her own hands and self-published 250 copies of “The Tales of Peter Rabbit,” and that was way before computers!

Then something happened a year later that changed everything. I saw a post from a longtime friend Deedee about a new physiological thriller available on Amazon by M.P. McDonald. She credited her best friend, Mary, and I thought she was kidding because of the same last name, but the awesome news was real! I was happy for her, but suddenly the Green-eyed Monster woke up and kicked me in the pants. “That’s supposed to be your goal, dummy!”

As high school alums, I friended Mary on Facebook and found out how she did it. She told me about this new-fangled thing called an electronic book. I’m so old school, my visions of publishing went only paper deep. Now a whole new world opened up. I was antsy to try it, but the fictional novel I was working on was only half done. So I saved all the info she gave me, including tips on finding a great cover designer, too. From her sample ideas, I found Steven Novak who wows me every time.

During semester breaks I typed away on my somewhat steamy spy romance/rom-com, heavily editing and whipping up witty banter,and an unusual case with a surprising scandal. It took 3 and 1/2 years! But Mary helped me through the publishing steps when it was ready. After I uploaded the cover and pages of Behind Frenemy Lines“and saw a sample launch on the KDP preview reader for the first time, I was thrilled!

“It looks like a real book!” I gushed to Mary.
“It is a real book!” she typed back, laughing.

What an incredible feeling! Thanks to her, I started 2017 with a published dream! It’s wonderfully surreal watching an ambition materialize. I highly recommend it. It’s funny too. Not long before, I couldn’t wrap my head around an e-book, yet here I was sort of tech-savvy! Best of all, I had a George McFly moment when the paperback arrived.

Now, what about a second book? Since I had those six spiritual snippets sitting idle from editorial purgatory, I was racking up quite a collection, but did I have enough to publish them myself? I ran what I had through the revision ringer and then created a bunch more to round it out. When family and friends told me their stories, I wrote those too.

Ever since my aunt passed in 2000, I’ve wanted to write, “Planting Crayons," because we need to help children grieve creatively in their own way. I’m so glad this book jogged my memory and made it possible.

Who knows, maybe I’ll keep submitting to that magazine. It’s comforting to know it’s not my only venue. If my dream can come true, so can yours! Whatever your goal, don’t listen to downers, especially if it’s the voice in your head. Pray for guidance, pump yourself up, and take matters into your own hands. Make it happen. And if you run into rejections, look at them as reflections instead.


P.S. June/July 2019, whoa, hold the presses-- I got in! And this time I wasn’t even trying. In May, out of the blue, I received a call from a Guideposts Magazine editor.

“We want to use your hummingbird story in our ‘What Prayer Can Do’ section this summer.”

What?? I was floored --and so grateful! I had sent that in three years ago. See, it’s all in God’s timing—and perseverance. Thank you, Lord!

( My story, "Faith With Feathers" is featured in the print edition June/July 2019 and also on their website at Guideposts.org.)