When “No” is better than “Yes”

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At last, the novel was finished. Two or three years of thinking, plotting, building characters and a world for them to live in, all down on the page. Now it was off to my beloved agent, who I figured would be as thrilled as I was with the final result.

She wasn’t. She said the idea was good, the story arc was there, the writing was on target. There was just one problem: the heroine. Didn’t like her, didn’t believe in her, didn’t think she fit in with anyone or anything else. There were lots of other things she said, but the only word I heard was “no.”

That was the best thing she could have said to me.

Nobody wants to hear “no” in relation to their creative work. “No” means back to the drawing board, the computer, the hard work of whatever it is you’re doing, whether writing or photography or baking cupcakes. But at the Romance Writers of America Nationals Conference two years ago, I heard best-selling author Cherry Adair talk about the power of “no.” She went through a period of reading that word a lot in rejection letters. Instead of drinking heavily and shelving her career as a novelist, she took all the rejection letters, highlighted the different reasons for the rejections in colored markers, stood on her couch, and looked down at which colors were predominant. Was it blue, signifying that the plot needed work? Was it red for the characters?

Cherry refused to give up. She was going to learn from these rejections, these “no”s. This tactic must have worked, because she was giving us budding novelists this lecture on the same day that her latest novel was on a couple of national bestseller lists. So yeah, I was going to listen.

I took my agent’s “no” as a “not yet.” I went back into the story and fixed my heroine. And I fell in love with my book. This novel is now so much better than it was before that I feel like I was selling myself short with that first draft. I love this thing so much it’s ridiculous. Hopefully someone else will, too.

If someone says “no” to you, use that “no” as a tool to make your work better. Maybe it’s not a “no,” but a “not yet” that will then become a “yes.”