Having A Clear Out

It looks at though the womag editors have had a busy week.

On top of my rejection from Take A Break last week I had another two on Thursday and then one from Woman's Weekly on Friday.

I few of my fellow online group have also had rejections from TAB so it looks as though they are having a spring clean and clearing the clutter from their desks.

So much for reaching my target of ten for the end of May, I'm now down to only three.

Better get writing and subbing again!

Hope you are all having a better week.

Woman's Weekly

This morning two fat envelopes appeared on my doormat, and recognising the labels, I knew without opening them that they were rejections.

The sad thing was that they were both from Woman's Weekly.

It doesn't matter how hard I study the magazines and scrutinise the guidelines, I've never managed to get it right for this magazine, even when I think I've written the perfect story from them.  What's even more frustrating is receiving a standard rejection telling me to read their guidelines.  Sometimes I wish I had a bit of mystic ability and could interpret a crystal ball.

Never mind, you have to take it on the chin and my stories will be reassessed and sent somewhere else.  You never know, one man's meat is another man's poison or so they say.

So now its back to the drawing board to create the perfect story for Woman's Weekly, because now its personal and I'm determined to crack this market one day, even if that day is a long way in the future.

A Bad Day At The Office

Not only was yesterday indeed a bad day at the office, sorting out the mess other people had made, but when I arrived home the bad news continued.

When I opened the door I was greeted by the ominous sight of an A4 envelope at my feet.

At first I thought it was The People's Friend returning my story, but it wasn't, it was my novel which I only sent out last week.

Sure enough attached to it was a standard rejection letter.  Whilst I'm pleased that they didn't keep me hanging around before giving me a no, I was slightly wounded by the speed at which it had been rejected.  

And then lo and behold, when I opened up my emails it was to receive a rejection for my story too.  And although it was a nice rejection, as always from The Friend, the result was still the same.

A double whammy you might say.

Oh well, these things happen and now I will have to send them both on elsewhere.  At least I've done the groundwork so it will be a simpler task this time round.

Onwards and upwards - I think I need to buy some more stamps before they go up in price at the end of the month.

Rejection

One thing I've learnt about being a wannabe writer, is that rejection is not a reflection on the person you are.  Perhaps your writing style doesn't suit the editor, or the subject matter of the story isn't quite right for the magazine at the moment.  And remember, one man's meat etc, so while one editor might not want it, it might be just what another is looking for. 

So, whenever a story lands on my mat with a thud, I take a look at it, see how it might be improved and send it right back out again to a different magazine.

The route to publication is based on perseverance. Or so I keep telling myself.

Today I went for an interview for a part time admin job.  It's only ten hours a week, but would fit in nicely with the freelance work I'm doing and still might leave some time for writing.  It was a nice set up, I liked the people I would be working with if I got the job, and as it is a new position there is plenty of scope for making the job your own.

Yet, despite the fact that it is only 10 hours a week, my interviewers told me that they had had a massive response to the advert.  

I felt that I answered the questions well, but as I have learnt from my writing, I have no idea what they are looking for. 

Now I'll have to sit tight until they have made a decision, and if I don't get it, then I will just have to get back on the horse so to speak and start looking for something else.

A little bit of me can't help hoping that this might be the one though, just like when I send out my stories, I hope that this time might just be the one.

What is life without hope?

Dodging The Doubt

Self doubt, I think, is one of the hardest things a wannabe writer has to live with. The questions which buzz around my brain a lot are, “Am I any good?” or “Will I ever be any good?”

I suppose the only way we can tell is by getting our work “out there”. Sometimes even that doesn’t help though, especially when the rejections keep flooding back in.

I am yet to find myself at a stage where I have a novel good enough to send out to potential agents. So far I have completed first drafts of two novels. The first will probably never see the light of day and languishes on a bookshelf in a folder. It is, I think, a poor first attempt but maybe one day I’ll dig it out again and see whether it has any glimmer of potential. The second, I was part way through a first edit when I lost my way and was then side-tracked by the thought of writing something completely new during November and the challenge of completing the 50,000 words with NaNoWriMo.

At the moment I am concentrating book 3. Since the end of November I have completed another 15,000 words and am hoping to reach 100,000 by the end of March, that’s if I pull my finger out anyway. Then I will break away from it, try to finish the first edit of book 2 and then return to edit book 3. Well that’s the plan.

Over the years (and I do mean years) I have been trying to test my talent, or lack of it, with short stories. And herein is where rejection lies. In fact so many of my stories have been rejected that whenever an A4 envelope comes bouncing back through my letter box I refuse to take it personally. I simply open it up, look at the standard rejection slip, sigh, re-read the story, edit, print and send it somewhere else. And then after four or five rejections I put it in a folder, alongside novel number one, and chalk it up to experience.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. I have been on several courses and have received some very positive feedback. I know (or at least I think I do) where my strengths and my weaknesses lie and am determined to work on both. And then last year, one story which I had dusted off and sent out for the third time, actually came highly commended in a Writer’s Forum competition and was published in the Weekly News. Proof positive that not making the grade first time round isn’t an indication of whether something is any good. So maybe I do have some talent after all.

I’ve tried a couple of writer’s circles in my area in an effort to get some outside feedback but neither have worked out for me and there I’ve drawn a blank. So I need to find some way of testing the water without publication and without paying out a fortune on critique services.

I was hoping to join the Romantic Novelists Association, New Writers Scheme, and have a novel critiqued that way. Sadly though, I missed the boat for this year and now the scheme is full. Maybe next year I’ll be a bit more on the ball/

In the meantime though I’ve taken the plunge and signed up for a correspondence course with the Writer’s Bureau on Novel and Short Story Writing. Watch this space to see how I get on.