Rejection reschmection
It’s an interesting lesson that is very easy to forget: doing things that a lot of people like is not easy, and if you’re plying your trade in many corners of the media/arts, that is almost certainly what you are aiming to do.
My own experience is not dissimilar. I sent Instinct off to 14 agents, receiving a rejection from each one (to be fair to them and me, I may have sent it to some who were not appropriate for commercial fiction). I then resolved to cast my net a little wider, finally finding my excellent agent after a total of 28 rejections.
He then sent my book off to six publishers – all the big boys – and one, Penguin, offered to take it on for an advance of £20,000 (in case you’re interested, I have been informed that 20 grand is pretty good in this day and age. However, you should be aware that you get half on signing, a quarter on delivery of the finished manuscript and the final quarter on publication, which makes a big chunk of it not very advanced at all. There was also around 18 months between signing and publication, so I’m glad I had a day job). My agent said that we could have attempted to use the offer to bargain amongst the others, but that sounded a bit mucky to me, and besides, a bird in the hand and all that.
So I guess I suffered around 35 rejections of various sorts, but none of them really fazed me. You see, I’ve spent many years working in an industry that routinely rejects 98% of what I come up with, so a ratio of 1:35 was actually better than my usually strike rate (and yours, if you’re an advertising creative).
It may take a ridiculous degree of self confidence, or it may take a realistic acceptance of the status quo, but whichever it is, if you want to make an ad/movie/book, or anything else that is intended for thousands of people, then it’s going to take perseverance.
Or dedication:
(Wasn’t Roy Castle lovely?)
Jack London must have spent a lot in postage. It’s certainly a lottery (so you did amazingly well). I am not a spammer!
Thanks, mum. x
(From wiki – I didn’t know this!)
Throughout his adult life Roy Castle suffered from agoraphobia. For the greater part of his career as an entertainer he was unhindered by the condition Рbut his role as the main presenter of Record Breakers proved challenging at times. Many of the multi-person record-breaking attempts were recorded in the vast BBC TC1 studio at Television Centre. At 995 square metres (10,250 ft²), TC1 is one of the largest television studios in Europe. The prospect of several hundred hula-hooping schoolgirls or bagpiping soldiers inside a large studio would cause Castle great anxiety. He prided himself on being a professional entertainer and he improvised many novel ways of managing his condition. For example, when filming in TC1 he would arrange with the producer to have a large wicker laundry basket placed out of camera shot, into which he would dive to take refuge from his panic attacks. His co-host Cheryl Baker would often sit on the basket, thus providing Castle with the comforting knowledge that the lid could not be accidentally removed.
I’d like to think that were true, but it does feel a tad on the bullshitty side.
I want to believe it so much I’m not going to do any research, in case it’s proved wrong.
Hi, Ben! I noticed a lot of traffic to my blog was coming from yours, so I want to say thank you for linking to my post! I hope it gave your blog readers lots of hope. Writing is a tough journey, but definitely not an impossible one. 🙂
Hope you’re having a great week!