Rejecting Rejection with Editor Madeline Smoot

Valentine’s Day has once again come and gone, in a whirlwind of chocolate and pink paper-mache hearts. And for those who flew solo this year, no worries. What may seem like a harsh rejection today, will one day prove to be a vital learning experience, whether it is in love, or in writing. In this weeks installment of, Rejecting Rejection: How to Say Yes to Yourself When the World Says No, editor Madeline Smoot shows us that not all unrequited responses are personal.

 

A Rejector’s View on Rejection

by Madeline Smoot

 

Rejection is hard. I’ve been rejected enough times to know that there’s no such thing as a “good” rejection. There are rejections that hurt less, but all of them hurt. All of them prick at your pride. All of them can ruin an otherwise perfectly good day.

And that is why it is so hard to write rejections.

I am an acquiring editor. I get the opportunity to make people’s dreams come true. I get to offer contracts, give advice, and bring a book to market. But for every contract I send out, there are hundreds of rejection letters that have to be issued instead.

And it’s hard. There’s a reason that many rejections are done by interns or delivered in a form letter. It’s hard to tell a person that their book isn’t quite ready – and that you don’t have the time, energy, or money to spend getting the book ready. It’s hard knowing that even if you aren’t outright crushing someone’s dream, you are at least chipping away at it.

 

Some rejections are, of course, harder than others. It’s easy to reject someone that clearly hasn’t done the research. I exclusively publish fantasy and science fiction novels for ages 8-18. It says this all over my site, and the books I have published at CBaY Books are all clearly in this genre. If you send me a picture book, I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep over having rejected it. After all, that’s not something I publish or plan to publish.

It’s harder though, gut-wrenching, to reject something from someone you’ve been working with. Occasionally a project will come along that is promising. The author rewrites it, and it’s still promising although not quite there. I work with that author and we go back and forth, only the project never quite gets to where it needs to be. At that point, I’m nearly as emotionally invested in the work as the author. But sometimes, you just have to know when to admit defeat. Those are truly difficult rejections.

But as awful as it is to be either the rejecting or the rejected, rejections are a necessary evil in the publishing business. I simply cannot publish every manuscript that comes my way, just as I cannot possibly only look at manuscripts that I will ultimately publish. The only way to truly avoid editorial rejection is to avoid the process altogether.

Ultimately though, rejection isn’t something we can’t escape in this world. As horrible as it is to reject all of those manuscripts, those few that I’m able to contract make it all worthwhile. It’s worth it to me to wade through all of the unsuitable manuscripts to find that one that really speaks to me, that I love.

Rejection is hard. There’s no getting around that, but you cannot let rejection stop you. There is a home for your work — if not with this project than the next. I firmly believe that about every project I see, even the ones I have to reject. Keep submitting until you find that perfect fit for you.