Rejecting Rejection with author Joy Preble

Today, the ALA awards were announced. We in kid lit are buzzing over the big winners, the surprises, the near misses and what it all means. Awards are lovely. They truly are, but what we writers really have to hang our hats on is process. Every day. Day in and day out.

So, welcome to our 4th installment of Rejecting Rejection: Saying Yes to Yourself When the World Says No. Joining us today is Eckhart Tolle–-oops, I mean Joy Preble with her contribution to our series with her charming essay, The Power of No.

 

The Power of No

by Joy Preble 

By the time my editor rejected my option book, I had been orphaned by 2 editors, 1 assistant editor, and 2 publicists at the same publishing house, never a boon to a writing career. My first YA novel, DREAMING ANASTASIA (Sourcebooks 2009), had been a minor but still significant break out book, far exceeding everyone’s modest expectations by going back for a second, then a third, then a fourth and fifth printing. (Let me note here for the uninitiated that while this sounds amazing – and is indeed thrilling—one must always take into account how many books they printed in the first place.) But still! Fabulous, right?

Well yes, and no. The second title, HAUNTED, arrived in February 2011. Somehow it ended up labeled as historical fiction (which it is not) rather than paranormal romance. For the first year or so of its life, it was never shelved in the same section as DREAMING ANASTASIA, even though it is the sequel. Yes, you read that correctly. My publicist quit the publishing house without having fully booked some tour events – a fact I learned once I had already flown to Arizona—and without having actually arranged the promised blog tour. Then Borders closed, a chain that had done wonderful things for my books. Also not good.

Editor 3—a lovely human being— acquired the third in the series. ANASTASIA FOREVER arrived quietly in August 2012. It’s a lovely trilogy, by the way: filled with mystery and alternate Romanov history and a re-telling of three Russian fairy tales, all intertwined with an epic scale romance that has a happy but very hard won ending in book 3. The reviews were mixed, but something resonated. The series kept defying the odds and to this day despite all of the above, still gets shelf space in many bookstores.

My editor rejected my option book anyway. My set-in-Texas high school football player/romance/spiritual journey type novel– was a no go. Not your brand, she said. You don’t write contemporary novels; you write this paranormal/fairy tale stuff.

I was understandably devastated. No matter that these things happen all the time. It was happening to me. I figured this was it. It was all over.

You know what I did then? I wrote a contemporary romantic comedy. Because I was bound and determined to win my editor over.  It was a cute book. It was sweet and funny and romantic. My agent told me the truth. It wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t the story I thought I was telling. I revised it. It was still no good.

And here’s why: I was writing the book I thought I should be writing. I was writing for someone else and not me.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, two things happened: One was that the acquiring editor at brand new Soho Teen approached me about writing what would eventually become THE SWEET DEAD LIFE and would arrive in May 2013. It was funny and quirky, the basic premise being: what if you were a 14 year old girl and your family was falling apart and then your stoner brother returned from a fatal car accident as your guardian angel and you found yourself in the middle of a huge cosmic mystery of global proportions?

 

Could I write that? he asked me. Yes, I said. I can do that.

 

But here’s the thing about writing something fun when your entire publishing career is in flux (as was my personal life, which is another story entirely).  I found myself crafting something bigger and deeper than the comic one-off. A sequel happened. It’s called THE A-WORD, and it will be here in May of this year. Somehow the books are being described now as Kurt Vonnegut meets Libba Bray. Yeah. Really. Failure had loosened me up.

The second thing that happened was that I stopped writing what I thought I should be writing. Instead, I sat down and wrote the book I had pitched to my agent a number of months back, one that was inspired by something that happened while my husband and I were driving from Houston to Dallas. We’d stopped for lunch at this restaurant on the freeway—one of those big, cavernous ones with a weird gift shop and pies for sale. And in the restroom, a ton of the usual Sharpie-scribbled graffiti on the inside of the stall door. “Jesus loves you” next to “Tiffany’s a slut.” That kind of thing. An idea had come to me while I was washing my hands. Two sisters on a road trip. One goes to the bathroom. And she doesn’t come back. In fact, she disappears, leaving a clue in Sharpie on the stall door. What would I do if this was me, I wondered. If my sister disappeared and left me this cryptic note?

Agent had loved the idea. But I hadn’t written it. Why? Because I was too busy trying to please my editor with a contemporary romantic comedy because that’s what I thought she wanted. That’s what I thought was selling. Turns out I am not a romantic comedy writer. At least not without some dark and quirky twists.

 

I began that novel in June of 2012 at a writing retreat in Giddings, Texas, at a wonderful place my fellow retreaters and I refer to as The Lodge of Death because of the numerous stuffed dead animals gracing the walls. Dead deer and raccoons and boar and lots of horns, too. A tiny stuffed deer placed inexplicably in a canoe with flowers, sitting on a side table looking very sad. Bambi in a boat. In retrospect, it was the perfect place to toss out all my dead notions of what it meant to foster this new and shiny career of mine that had threatened to dull around the edges.

I finished the book by November. Revised until Christmas. My agent fell in love with it. So did I. We sent it off into the world in early January 2013. By mid year it had sold. FINDING PARIS will be out in spring 2015 from Balzer and Bray. A crazy road trip with two sisters that starts in Vegas and uncovers some very dark secrets. Turns out it was the true book of my heart. From dead deer on the walls to book sale. Yup. That’s how it worked.

But only after I got over myself.

 

I know that this is the place where I should quote Anne Lamott and tell you ‘bird by bird,’ or quote Stephen King about how he threw Carrie into the garbage and thank God for his wife Tabitha pulling it out. Or find some nugget from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, All of which would be great and relevant.

But I will quote Bethenny Frankel’s A Place of Yes instead. Yes, the woman from Real Housewives of NYC and the Skinny Girl product empire. Rule One for Success: “Find Your Truth. Dig deep inside and figure out what is authentic for you, not anybody else.”

What can I say? I think it’s good advice.

 

 Joy Preble is Texas girl who was born and raised in Chicago and a former high school teacher who now writes full time, which means she gets paid for making up stuff. She speaks and teaches widely on writing and literacy at libraries and schools as well as SCBWI, NCTE, AWP and other conferences. Joy is the author of THE SWEET DEAD LIFE and its forthcoming sequel, THE A WORD (May 2014), both from Soho Press. Kirkus hailed THE SWEET DEAD LIFE with “Hallelujah! A paranormal tale of angels…that breaks the mold.” She is also the author the DREAMING ANASTASIA series (Sourcebooks) that combines paranormal romance with Russian folklore. DREAMING ANASTASIA was nominated for a Cybil Award in the Teen Sci-Fi/Fantasy Category in 2009. It was named an ABC Best Book for Children, Teen Category in 2009, and was featured in Justine Magazine. Joy also has a contemporary mystery/romance on the way: FINDING PARIS will be out in Spring, 2015 from Balzer and Bray/Harper Collins. When she’s not writing, you can find Joy eating guacamole and unsuccessfully battling her Bravo channel addiction