I am trying to wrap my mind around the almost hysterical, obsessive need for people to become a published author. Mostly, I suspect, it is like one of those twist off caps on a cheap bottle of wine where the threads don’t quite catch right. There is a concentrated effort to get the cap off. More simply, getting into the publishing racket is another example of our need for acceptance in the crowd of strangers. We live in age where many people wish to stand out apart from the crowd as an accomplished worthy, special word genius. The problem is the number of people who want to stand out by writing books has become larger than the crowd that read and buy books.
Like most people I admired perseverance as a noble attribute. People who don’t easily give and roll over with the first wall in life they hit. People who pick themselves up and keep on going. That’s my kind of people. Pull up a chair, I raise a glass of OJ to your grit.
But there is a limit. I think I may have found where that fence is. There is a writer who blogs at Literary Rejection Display and he’s blogged about his 11,000 rejections on the way to getting 82 stories published. One publishing industry insider called this record of rejection “inspirational.”
Remember we are talking about rejection. That haunting word that has shadowed every kid from 11 years on. Who in defeat, looks back at the bully and says, “Yeah, I’ll show you.”
Let’s test this theory of what is inspirational inside the world of rejection. Forget about writing stories for a moment. Let’s say the person wishes more than anything to be a world-class marksman and reap the honor of that status with the larger world. He goes to the shooting range. Pulls out his rifle and goes through 11,000 rounds of ammo. He hits the target 82 times. Not a candidate for sniper’s school. But he doesn’t give up. He slaps in another clip and blasts away.
Or assume he’s a trainee pilot and manages to crash land a plane (let’s make that a different plane) 11,000 times but has 82 confirmed landings where the plane safely landed. The air force would likely not give him a set of wings. United Airlines might hire him. But do you seriously want him flying the plane you are in?
Or assume he builds custom cars on spec. His brochure says he personally built spec cars, which were rejected by 11,000 buyers but 82 cars he managed to sell. Do you want to buy or ride in one of his cars?
Or he bakes cakes which are rejected by the 11,000 cake tasters, who spit them out, drink water to wash away the bad taste and ultimately shopped for cakes elsewhere. Still 82 other cake buyers are bought one of his cakes, saying they were yummy. Would you eat the cake?
Would we find the marksman, trainee pilot, car builder and cake maker inspirational in light of their rejections? Or would we wonder how a person can take that kind of beating, wake up the next morning and knowing he had a .007 percent chance of success but still manages to pull out the rifle, get into the cockpit of the plane, go to the garage and assemble another spec car, or to kitchen to bake a cake, firing up the process of almost near certain rejection all over again?
It seems writing stories and books is a special areas of human activity that attracts so many people who willingly continue to persist despite the clear message that rejection delivers: you should devote your talents and energies to something with at least lottery type odds of success. I don’t have the answer to the question of why the continued effort to write when such a clear signal of rejection of a writer’s work indicates that he shouldn’t bother is inspirational? Other than one: It is difficult to let go of a dream. Especially if you believe that in time, with enough effort, the dream can come true.
The harsh reality is that not everyone can play the violin, swim, run, shoot, cook, sing, dance or tell jokes at a professional level. There is a certain level that defines success. It is where a commercial enterprise that depends on turning a profit will pay money in order to support the talent. A big talent brings in a lot of money. Sponsors will pay money to be associated with the skill and talent. Perhaps in sports it is easier to know who has won and who has lost. It is objective. There are cameras at the finish line. Sensors at the end of the pool pick up the first touch. There is no arguing the toss. No bellyaching that a winner is made a loser because the gatekeepers don’t recognize talent. Losing 11,000 times isn’t professional talent. It is by definition not professional. The pitcher who throws 82 strikes is a hero, and can play for the Yankees. But if he throws 11,000 balls into the dirt in order to get 82 strikes, no one is going to write an inspirational movie about that player’s devotion to the game and how the Yankees were damn fools to overlook him.
In writing, the general feeling is that, well, it is all feeling, subjective, and if you tunnel away long enough, you can burrow under the gatekeepers wall and moat, breach the inner walls, and do a victory dance, holding up the published story or book, showing the world you are a winner after all.
No one likes rejection. The reality of the world is that truly talented people with unique abilities and rare talents and skills are a small percentage of the total population. The rest of us admire such people. We watch them perform. We benefit from such performances in many different ways. The problem emerges when we delude ourselves into telling ourselves, “Hey, I can write cozy novels just like Cakes Copeland.” Or “I can tell jokes better than David Letterman.” Or “I can write a novel better than Dan Brown.”
I know. The first and last example is what gives all that false hope. No one truly believes the network should dump Letterman and hire him as the replacement. Being funny is more than just hard work. Like writing a story or book.
I don’t know what the magic number is before a writer should move on. But I’d say it isn’t the 11,000 elevation, the K2 of rejection. A heavy weight boxer that takes 11,000 body punches while throwing 82 deserves a place in Guinness Book of World Records for continuing to stand in the ring. But inspiration isn’t the word that comes to mind when you look at the boxer who has taken that beating. Sadness is closer to the mark, a sadness that comes from understanding that we occupy a world where no one has the balls to tell the boxer that the fight is over. We tell him that because he’s still standing on his feet after such punishment that he is inspirational. Instead we should be telling him throw in the towel, take a shower, go home, devote what precious time he has left on this earth for and with family, friends, and community. Inside that place, he is more likely to make a difference, have more impact and a life with more meaning. There are things in life other than writing stories, books and films from which self-worth and accomplishment can be achieved. And just maybe those are things that, in the long run, should be valued more, seen as more significant than a published book with one’s name on the spine and front cover.
But wait one moment. Rejection has a certain meaning in the old world of publishing. Will that change as publishing migrates online and ebooks multiply like fireflies around the porch light? No question about it, change is already here. We are entering an new digital age where the old notion of rejection of book will radically alter. No one will have the patience to accumulate 11,000 rejections. They won’t need to wait for one rejection from a traditional publisher. Here’s why. Everyone now has access to make their books available to the whole world by simply uploading it. Others will be invited to read, download, buy or share it. In this new age of publishing, rejection will gather a new meaning. But it won’t be rejection at the gateway to readers.
It will be inside the beltway of readers that rejection will bite like a pit bull.
In this new world where everyone can claim to be an author, rejection will come as “authors” realize that only 82 of every 11,000 online authors are worth reading and indeed are read. The book with a few hits will become the new measurement of rejection. There will be sly ways sold to online authors to pump up their number of readers. That will soon be exposed as fraud. Rejection will be coded in new ways. Don’t think technology will abolish it. That won’t happen. People will still complain and wail of the unfairness of it all. In the end, old age, new age publishing, the bottom line is pretty much the same. There are only a small number of authors worth reading. Making it easier to be “published” doesn’t make it any easier to attract an audience.
Great or even good writing is rare. If you are an avid reader, finding an author you want to read has always been like panning for gold. In the future, readers will miss the old publishing system, imperfect as it was, when editors and agents waded into the murky waters, panning for gold. They published stuff that wasn’t gold. But that is only human. Readers have great expectations when they read a story or book or poem and most of them hate going through tons of gravel looking for a few specs of gold. Instead of those polite, meaningless form letters from traditional publishers, readers may not be so kind when their anger and disappointment of reading an inferior work causes them to shout insults. If I had to make a prediction, rejection is set to become much nastier, personal, and demoralizing. The new crop of authors will look back with longing at how civilized the old world of rejection really was.
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