Exposing the truth about writer rejection

By Denise Turney
Enter the world of a writer. Fuzzy, cloudy thoughts about an impending success that’s most certain to come, millions of book readers finally seeing what great talent the writer has always possessed. A willingness to forego parties, movie nights and long weekend getaways just to have time to finish another novel chapter – it’s a writer’s inner world, a choice a writer makes over and over.

Some writers pour hundreds, even thousands, of dollars into book marketing, steadfastly hoping to get their book in front of larger numbers of people. Add to that the fact that, for a writer, work never ends, ideas, plots, characters and twists surfacing in his or her bright, creative mind at all hours of the day or night.

Is it any wonder that a writer takes it personally, as if an editor or publisher just punched her in the stomach, each time she receives a rejection letter? As if that wasn’t enough, far too many rejection letters that writers receive are ‘canned’.

If a writer looks deeply enough, he could walk away with this glimmer of hope. He could recognize that, perhaps, an incredibly busy editor or publisher didn’t even take the time to read his manuscript. In that case, it’s so what about the rejection letter. Or the writer could come to the conclusion that the rejection letter does no more than group them with the other 99% of writers who submitted a manuscript to the same editor or publisher.

Get enough rejection letters and it’s not surprising for a writer to start doubting that she chose the right profession, perhaps even forcing the writer to conclude that, for her, novel writing will never be more than a hobby, despite fantasies and daydreams that declare just the opposite. After all, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 26% of novelists and non-fiction writers only write on a part-time basis.

Of note, 68% of writers are also self-employed. Additionally, the lion’s share of the writers reported on by the Statistics Bureau are non-fiction writers. Newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, corporations, marketing agencies and public relations firms are types of organizations many of these writers create content for.

Although non-fiction writers don’t generally have to read through a rejection letter the way a novelist does, non-fiction writers (especially those who are self-employed) do deal with job proposal rejection. It’s these points that make it absolutely necessary for a writer to have a tough interior if he plans to stick around long, possibly writing his way into the top 10% of writers, creative artists who earned, on average, more than $109,000 annually as of 2010.

Of course, the highest paid novelists, people like J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, James Patterson, Stephanie Meyer, Danielle Steel and Ken Follett, pull in tens of millions of dollars a year. And, perhaps, it’s these novelists’ tremendous success that lends an air of hope, a belief in their own potential (yet unrealized) success that keeps many lesser known writers churning out one novel after another, laughing at the words printed a on crisp rejection letter.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.