Tag Archives: garnering an agent

Rejection Sucks

holdingbaby

I love this picture. You can literally feel this new dad’s love for his newborn can’t you? It’s so precious. As an artist and writer, my books feel like babies to me. They aren’t true stories, but fiction often digs deeper to the underlying feelings and truths within our inner lives. They reveal a bit of our soul’s path. So when an agent rejects our work, even if they didn’t read it, that rejection will sting. It’s just part of the process.

I’ve come to believe that all artists have to feel these emotions, pause, take some time off, then get right back into the arena again. Feel the fear then take baby steps forward anyway. What I don’t agree with, is swallowing the hurt feelings and leapfrogging intellectually into a fake persona of gratitude and bliss. I’ll explain. Yesterday I spoke with a friend who has a degree in spiritual psychology. As I was telling him that the query process deflated me and inflamed my insecurities, he interjected that I needed to explore my judgements based on past experiences. Well, the query process is hard, I replied. Before I could elaborate, he then asked, “Is it hard? Or is that the judgement you choose to live by based on past experiences?”

I SO get where he is coming from as I do believe that most humans live a pseudo Pavlovian life, trying to avoid repeating things that they decided hurt, or is scary from the past. Sometimes it’s tragic, like not dancing or traveling or dating due to past hurts, anxiety created by ‘stories’ or pre-determined outcomes. BUT, and I say this will so much respect, I disagree with this expert when it comes to trying to get my book published.

The query process hurts. There’s no way around that. Am I wrong? Since I finished Between Thoughts of You I’ve received 4 rejections from agents. Now a few others and a publisher are still considering it, but the rejections still give a walloping thump to my confidence as a writer. EVEN if they didn’t read a word of my writing.

For instance, on Thursday the president of publishing agency rejected my synopsis and pitch saying that she was ‘extremely selective’ based on her list of established authors and for that reason she wouldn’t be asking me for a writing sample. Interestingly, she responded to me within a day and thanked me for a great pitch and for doing research about her and thought I was talented, so she strongly encouraged me to pitch one of her junior agents. Ok, ouch. It was a bizarre rejection. I tried not to get into my ego, but I felt as if I was holding my baby in my arms and she had thrown it into the trash before even looking at it. I’m selective too. I didn’t think her junior agents, most just out of college, would have the contacts to help me get published. I wondered why she had told someone at Publishers Weekly that she was open to queries from new voices, as it sounded like she wasn’t, or had changed her mind.

So, I needed to feel the sting of that rejection and then distract myself by taking a day off from pitching. I’m not giving up. And intellectually I know that maybe she and I aren’t in alignment and that I’ll find an agent who will read my writing and who will feel strongly that I do have some talent and have two other novels under my belt with another on the way, so can be pitched easily to publishing houses. Right? Intellectually I understand that I need gratitude for the process. But, stuffing emotions so I can put on a spiritually evolved persona, doesn’t do me any good. One of my friends said, “What a blessing! The Universe is sending you the perfect agent who will be completely in alignment with you. BE HAPPY!” Um ok. But can I at least feel this disappointment first? Why are so many Americans afraid to feel?

Kind of like my other friend last night. He wanted me to call into question all the judgements I hold about the query process, insisting that the mind is powerful and I could just think it into a fun process. Ok, yes the mind is powerful. But so is the heart and our world of emotions where my creativity lives. Let me feel bad for one day regarding this rejection of my baby, I won’t wallow in the sadness, but I think I need to feel it.  I’ll get back into the arena and pitch another agent next week. We really do need to feel and move through the feelings, don’t you think? Not being allowed to feel, like many of us in our childhoods, just builds up a lot of resistance and anxiety that lives in our tissues and demands to come out somehow, someway eventually. It creates an unauthentic existence in my mind. Like a woman smiling and laughing and saying how blessed she feels as she’s burying a child. It just doesn’t work that way. Every rejection calls into question whether I should continue writing and birthing new babies, or just bury the ones I have with the understanding that maybe, just maybe my writing isn’t good enough. And that, my friends, is painful. There’s no way around it.

So today, I feel a bit better after a day off. I’ll take the weekend to just breathe, hang with my boys, teach yoga, I’ll get back at it on Monday. I will take my friend’s advice on this point. When I said I wonder when I’ll get my signs that it’s time to give up on trying to get published traditionally or venture into self publishing, he advised me to pause and not force anything out of fear. I won’t change the course of my goals based on this one rejection. I’ll wait, give myself some time, and then see if I feel any different. Self publishing is daunting for this FT single mom as I feel as if I’d have to give up my paid jobs of teaching and freelancing to dedicate myself solely to it, while also investing to pay for it, and that pulls me out of creativity and into self promotion with less money coming in… which is daunting for me…

Any of you writers out there know what I’m going through? Any advice? How did you navigate this choice? Chime in! I could use some words of advice from experience, instead of criticism for allowing judgements to filter into my statements, lol.

Love & light ~

Laura

First Creative Writer’s Conference…with Kids in Tow!

keys

I’m writing this post from my hotel room in San Diego at the La Jolla Writer’s Conference. What an amazing two days so far! At first I almost cancelled coming, as I didn’t have a sitter Friday and Sunday I’m throwing a birthday party for my youngest munchkin..So, not only would I need to bring my children along Friday and part of Saturday, I wouldn’t have the extra time and attention needed to throw a perfect birthday party back in LA on Sunday. You dads out there might not get this…but man, don’t you moms know that need to throw a perfect party? 🙂 I could spend hours arranging flowers, cleaning house, making cupcakes etc. even for 6-year-olds. It must be a southern thing…I’m trying to recover from this.

So, it’s clear that I need to let go of that perfect parenting bug I’ve been bitten by. AND, I’ve realized that it was a wise decision to go to my first creative writer’s conference and let my kiddos tag along. Why? Because how often does my life revolve around them?  From soccer games and practices, to violin lessons, homework, concerts, doctor visits, etc.—I’m at their beckon call. And it struck me, as a single mom writing a novel, that it’s okay to ask my boys to come along and sacrifice some of their agenda in order to support me and my work. So that’s what we did. It was no problem.  My 12-year-old babysat my just-turned 6-year-old while I attended two lectures Friday. They watched a movie and I garnered amazing advice. It was a win-win. Instead of going to the networking event Friday evening, the three of us hit the pool, had a yummy dinner, rented a good movie and snuggled. Saturday morning started at 6 a.m. for me and I raced from lecture to events all day with a lunch break at the pool with my boys. My nanny picked them up this afternoon and took them back to LA for me, so luckily, I was able to participate in all the afternoon lectures and even my own terrifying pitch session, where I described my novel to two agents and a filmmaker and screenwriter—talk about frightening! I’m still speechless at their responses, encouragement and requests to read my work. I’m so filled with gratitude and excitement for next steps. 🙂

So, I have a few things to say about this experience:

First, my years interviewing experts as a parenting editor suggested this —but I now know without a doubt—that it’s good for children to see and support their parents working toward goals. This is especially true of single parents. If all children see are moms sacrificing their identities, dreams and goals for their children, these children may grow up with a sense of self importance, a false sense of entitlement and little patience for cooperation or compromise—not to mention out-dated views on spousal roles.

Secondly: WOW the writers, film makers, poets, agents, publicists, attorneys at this conference have been amazing!  Their willingness to give their time, insights and support have been invaluable to me. I haven’t been to one lecture that didn’t provide incredible information and inspiration. I have a lot of advice to digest from the business of publishing and negotiating contracts, to writing the perfect query and synopsis, to marketing strategies.

It’s a lot to cover. And that’s not even touching on the part that I love most: creating and how to keep those negative voices at bay that can stall the writing process. I’ve gotten a lot of support at this conference. I love the writers that I’ve met. I’m inspired by their honesty and their bravery. Each one is an artist who is baring his/her soul to some degree. In order to write well, a person must “find those tender places,” as Patti Callahan Henry,  a New York Times best-selling author, eloquently explained today. It requires cutting off the fear of being good enough and being able to close the door on that negative critic inside that worries about what others will think. And in doing so, we can keep working and getting better at our craft, while finding our unique voice as writers. I loved what Callahan Henry said today: “Our voice is buried in that compost pile from our youth.” The best writers bravely go there. And clearly, Henry does this. I picked up many books by this southern writer, and am excited to read all of them. I’m half-way through her latest: The Stories We Tell, and know I won’t go to bed until I’m done. I’m immersed in this Savannah-based tale and want to learn the truth lingering between the couple who seem to have it all…Her characters are compelling and believable, who live in a world that invites me in to sit a while and marinate in their truth—which may just resonate with my own. And that’s all a writer can hope for isn’t it?

If you’re a creative writer or artist, please chime in. What helps you find your voice? What helps you stay on track? How do you keep negative voices at bay and continue creating when the world—or your world—might be telling you to do “better” things with your time? I look forward to hearing from you. x

Finding Courage to Stay on Course

Take-control-of-Your-Life

I recently read an inspiring quote from a friend, (I’ll paraphrase): “All the shit, drama and pain you’ve dealt with in life has prepared you for this present moment, this present action, this present course.”

It’s so true, right? Well, sometimes. It’s only true if each painful experience propels growth. As long as I can see that each time someone has hurt me, hasn’t seen, or heard me, or said something cruel, or treated me without respect—it was exactly what I needed in order to find my boundaries, my self-respect, my strength, my confidence, my kindness, my direction. And even when I hurt others, or typically myself, if I can learn to forgive, have more compassion and ‘own’ my issues, I’ll become stronger and closer to the person I want to be.

All of this sounds groovy now, but when I’m in the thick of it with someone, it’s hard to keep in mind. But I’m learning that that’s ok too—maybe I’m letting myself feel more now, and not dismiss things so quickly in order to avoid confrontation. I don’t know. Here’s an example:

Someone recently hurt me by saying I needed to give up writing—that it would never work out and that I needed to move out of California or I’d be destitute within 3 years. Ow.

Ok, that was really negative. My eyes welled up with tears and my stomach felt like it had been kicked as I listened. (It didn’t help that this conversation came a week after I had been heart broken. But that’s not for this venue.) This judgmental tirade came after I said, happily, that I had finished polishing 150 pages of my novel…I was in shock as I listened to the negative rant. The old me, the me before daily yoga and meditation, would have likely not said anything, took more abuse, felt horrible, internalized this, doubted myself, and then finally complained to a few friends in order to try to garner some sort of support. The new me just looked at this person, felt the pain that was welling inside my stomach and said quietly that the conversation wasn’t kind. The conversation didn’t end, sadly, with more justifications as to why I would never get published and was living beyond my means…but in my mind, I knew I responded authentically and calmly—in the moment–(a big deal for me) and was able to mentally button up the judgement as unsupportive, fearful, negative.

I’ve been a journalist and writer for 15 + years and this person hadn’t read anything of mine or even a chapter of my current book or my first novel. And, of course, I won’t be destitute within 3 years!

Honestly.

But for some reason, over the past two weeks, I’ve come back to this conversation in my mind to see what I can learn from it. I’ve decided to dismiss the negativity of it. What you think is what you can manifest right?

But it struck a chord. I have half my novel finished and the rest outlined. I’m very excited and a few friends have read a bit of it to give me feedback. But since this summer, I have found so many distractions. I am to blame for allowing each and every one them. Between soccer games, homework, sickness, volunteer demands, friend demands, work, trainings, it can get hairy. But, at the end of the day, I am in control of my schedule. I am in control of my time. I am in control of my thoughts, my actions and who I choose to let into my life.

So with that in mind, I’ve decided that the reason why I keep floating back to this conversation is that I realize that I’m out of balance. It can seem almost insurmountable with kid demands, but there really is at least 2 hours a day to work on my book. And I can fit in yoga and mediation for my sanity. (All you single parents know just what I mean!) So, if that means that dishes pile up in the sink or that my kiddos don’t have rooms made or the perfectly-kept house, who cares?

I’m taking the steps I need to get published. I spent more money today (Egads! One more step toward destitution! ha ha) and signed up for the La Jolla Writers Conference next weekend. Yup, there are soccer games, a bar mitzvah, and my son’s birthday party to prep for. But I’ve decided that I have to put my writing goal on my to-do list each week. If it means missing a soccer game, or having a birthday party that isn’t perfect. So be it.

I’m so excited (and nervous) to go as many agents and authors attend this conference where they give feedback on work, have writer jam sessions, as well as listen to “7 minute pitches”.  So now I have to hone my 7 minute pitch for Uriel’s Mask—as well as polish my one page synopsis. But it’s what I need to do. If I expect an agent, who likely works 50+ hour weeks in this field to take me seriously, I have to push aside distractions and take my writing just as seriously. I even ordered new business cards.

So, I’m officially taking the plunge. And you know what? I’m actually thankful for the hard knocks this month…they are helping me to focus on my path, my journey and GET IN CONTROL OF MY LIFE.

I’d really love to hear from any of you out there who have had similar experiences where either fear or distractions kept you from finishing a project or keeping you from your art. How do you stay on course? Any single parents out there trying to carve out a regular schedule for an artistic project? PLEASE reach out. I’d love to share motivational strategies. Some days, I feel like I’ve run a marathon before 10 a.m. Lets share strategies to keep a daily schedule or to stay on track.  Thanks so much for reading! XO