Rejecting Rejection with author Janet Fox

In this Monday’s Rejecting Rejection, award-winning author Janet Fox describes her journey up the ladder to a successful writing career, and how the best way to deal with rejection is to use it in whichever way gets you one step further up that ladder.

Using Rejection as a Rung in Your Ladder to Success

by Janet Fox

I will say this up front: I’ve never rejected rejection. What I have done is use rejection as a ladder to climb up and over the wall between me and my life’s goal, which is to be the best writer I can be.

If you want to kick rejection’s butt, you should use it by applying whatever metaphor you wish that makes rejection your ally, not your enemy.

When I was starting out as a wannabe children’s author, I wrote at a desk with narrow drawers. I knew it would be difficult to get published – this was back in the day when submissions were still sent out in manila envelopes and multiple submissions were discouraged and no one I knew had an agent. Each rejection letter I received – and yes, they came back on paper in SASE’s – went into one of those narrow drawers, the middle drawer on the left. I decided that I would only quit trying to become a “real” author when I amassed enough rejection slips that the drawer would no longer close.

About two years into this adventure I’d collected quite a few rejections, but I still had inches left to go before that drawer was stuffed to the gills.

Months could go by with a single hard-copy manuscript at a single house. I learned that if I wanted to be published I had to keep writing, and not sit around waiting for the next rejection letter or hoping for an acceptance. This was rung one on the rejection ladder.

Rung two was that all that writing led me to an exploration of craft. I attended SCBWI meetings and conferences as often as possible. I partnered with a couple of friends in a weekly critique group. I read books and articles on craft and read novels and stories across genres.

This naturally led to rung three: learning how to revise.

Rung four was an eye-opening lecture on the value of selling articles or stories to magazines like Highlights for Children and the Carus publications. I combed my files for items that might appeal, and sold an article to Highlights and a story to Spider Magazine, and that propelled me into the realm of Published Author.

Rejection slips were still accumulating in my drawer, but now I was ready to think outside the box, and I had an idea for a non-fiction book for middle graders. I pitched and sold that project to a small but highly-regarded publisher, and – wow! – was on my way to becoming a Published Author of Books for Children.

But not published yet in my chosen realm – a picture book or novel published by one of the New York houses.

About the time that I sold my non-fiction book, the Internet blew up, and suddenly overwrought editors were throwing their hands in the air and closing their doors to un-agented submissions, and the graffiti on the wall against which my ladder leaned read “find an agent.” At an SCBWI event I met a wonderful agent just starting out, and she liked a first page of a picture book that I brought to critique, so I sent her the rest of the manuscript.

Which she rejected.

But she liked my voice enough to invite me to submit something in the future. So I did.

Again she wanted to read more – this was a young adult novel – and I had my fingers crossed for several months before she sent me back a lovely letter.

A rejection letter.

But when I say this letter was lovely, I mean it was full of praise for my voice and concept, but the novel was undeveloped, too shallow, too awkward. She wrote a couple of paragraphs that included specific suggestions for improvement, including several books I should read for examples. And she left the door open for further submission. This was akin to propelling me up several rungs of the ladder at once.

I read and worked – I remember well this was the summer before my little non-fiction book would come out the next February – and by fall I felt pretty good about this novel, and that’s when, at the last minute, I attended another SCBWI conference, and at the very, very last minute, snagged a critique with an editor at Simon & Schuster. This editor had announced at the conference, before I met with her, that she was leaving S&S to become an agent.

When I met with her, she expressed such excitement at the pages I’d submitted for critique that, for the first time on the ladder, I skipped rungs. Within three months I’d submitted the rest of the novel to her, and became one of her first clients. She sold my novel, in a two-book deal, to Penguin the following year.

But there are more rungs on this ladder. Because, if you remember, my goal was not to become published. It was to become the best writer I can be.

Which means that rejection has now taken on a different value, a subtler hue. Now it’s not just about selling a book, it’s about garnering starred reviews. It’s about reaching a wider audience. It’s about hearing from readers that I’ve made a difference in their lives. The top of the wall seems to recede and the ladder gets harder to climb, and the task of climbing takes increasing effort.

Climbing the ladder now means that I’ve gone back to school for my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. It means taking on the onerous task of publicity while trying to carve out significant time for new writing. It means venturing into new genres and moving out of my comfort zone. And it means questioning everything to do with my writing life, from mechanics (do I outline or not?) to associations (do I self-publish or not?).

Sadly, continuing the climb means parting ways amicably with my first agent, but, happily, it means signing with a new agent who understands this new direction and focus in my work. This new agent is, ironically, the very same agent who gave me such rich and rewarding advice eight years ago. As she said during our first agent-client conversation, “In this business, more and more, I realize it’s best to take the long view.”

I have a very long view from my perch on the ladder. Long enough now to see that the top of the wall is unobtainable, in that I will be learning to be the “best writer” for the rest of my life. Long enough now to see that rejection comes in many forms, whether it’s the insecurity of several months without an agent, or uncertainty in my skills, or worrying that no editor will buy this manuscript or that, or that I’ll never write well enough to be good, let alone “best.”

Yet rejection still serves. Rejection is my ally, my impetus. Without the rejection ladder, the wall would be insurmountable. And, I’ll admit, the view from the rung I’m on right now is spectacular.

 

Janet Fox writes award-winning fiction and nonfiction for children of all ages. Her 2010 young adult debut novel, Faithful, was an Amelia Bloomer Project pick, and was followed in 2011 by a companion novel, Forgiven, a Junior Library Guild selection and WILLA Literary Award finalist. Her newest YA novel, Sirens, launched in November 2012; the Kirkus reviewer said in part, “Sirens is a celebration of girl power, sisterhood, and hope for the future.” Janet is a 2010 graduate of the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a former high school English teacher. She is represented by Erin Murphy of Erin Murphy Literary Agency. Janet and her family live in Bozeman, Montana, where they enjoy the mountain vistas, and you can find her at www.janetsfox.com.