Chapter 10 - That sinking feeling
Every website in the know tells aspiring authors that they should get used to rejection, and I’m no different to everyone else. I wrote to around 15 agencies asking for representation and a couple of months later, I’d either been rejected or hadn’t heard from every single one. When I sat back and thought about it, there was probably a good reason for this. The astute amongst you will notice there is neither a chapter nor a mention anywhere in the proceeding chapters dedicated to editing, because up until this point I’d done very little - big mistake!
Like so many new authors out there, I got impatient. I’d had some really positive feedback from those who’d read my book and I got a bit carried away - I simply couldn’t wait to see what would happen when I submitted to agents. It wasn’t that I thought my book was so good it didn’t need to be edited, I just thought it was probably good enough to be picked up and then the real editing would happen in conjunction with my agent and an editor who knew what they were talking about. To be clear, it wasn’t full of grammatical errors and typos or anything like that, it was that I hadn’t sought enough critical feedback or spent time tightening the whole thing up. I have no idea if this was why my book was rejected, or whether it was the then title ‘E=’ that put people off, or if it just didn’t appeal to those I sent it to, but after this, I sought more robust feedback; I sent it to Georgina.
Georgina is my other sister, my more critical sister, my sister who is not a twenty year old girl slap bang in the middle of my target audience, and because of these things, her feedback was oodles more constructive than Alice’s (and the others I’d shared Legacy with to date). Georgina came back with thoughts on descriptive detail, ideas on character development and with comments about word repetition. This was great as it was stuff I could really use and meant I could have a proper, critical conversation about structure, content and characters. I took the feedback on board and also started reading and rereading successful books in my broad genre; books like The Hunger Games, Twilight and A Discovery of Witches, before I started thoroughly editing my manuscript.
By the time I’d been through this process, I’d fallen pretty much out of love with the idea of traditionally publishing my book, but I submitted to one more agency - The Blair Partnership - as they were the only agency I’d come across who seemed to be doing ANYTHING at all to try and move the industry forwards. Before I heard back though (another rejection), I’d already been swept up in the freedom and speed of self-publishing (as we’ve already established, I’m not a patient person!) and had self-published online. Furthermore, around this time I heard a brilliant quote - ‘rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools’ - and self-publishing felt a little bit like circumnavigating the rules…
Like so many new authors out there, I got impatient. I’d had some really positive feedback from those who’d read my book and I got a bit carried away - I simply couldn’t wait to see what would happen when I submitted to agents. It wasn’t that I thought my book was so good it didn’t need to be edited, I just thought it was probably good enough to be picked up and then the real editing would happen in conjunction with my agent and an editor who knew what they were talking about. To be clear, it wasn’t full of grammatical errors and typos or anything like that, it was that I hadn’t sought enough critical feedback or spent time tightening the whole thing up. I have no idea if this was why my book was rejected, or whether it was the then title ‘E=’ that put people off, or if it just didn’t appeal to those I sent it to, but after this, I sought more robust feedback; I sent it to Georgina.
Georgina is my other sister, my more critical sister, my sister who is not a twenty year old girl slap bang in the middle of my target audience, and because of these things, her feedback was oodles more constructive than Alice’s (and the others I’d shared Legacy with to date). Georgina came back with thoughts on descriptive detail, ideas on character development and with comments about word repetition. This was great as it was stuff I could really use and meant I could have a proper, critical conversation about structure, content and characters. I took the feedback on board and also started reading and rereading successful books in my broad genre; books like The Hunger Games, Twilight and A Discovery of Witches, before I started thoroughly editing my manuscript.
By the time I’d been through this process, I’d fallen pretty much out of love with the idea of traditionally publishing my book, but I submitted to one more agency - The Blair Partnership - as they were the only agency I’d come across who seemed to be doing ANYTHING at all to try and move the industry forwards. Before I heard back though (another rejection), I’d already been swept up in the freedom and speed of self-publishing (as we’ve already established, I’m not a patient person!) and had self-published online. Furthermore, around this time I heard a brilliant quote - ‘rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools’ - and self-publishing felt a little bit like circumnavigating the rules…
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