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Posts Tagged ‘Writer’s Digest’

  1. Rejection: An Art?

    July 10, 2012 by katemeadows

    Recently, a family friend shared a story with me from the Huffington Post about 26 publishers who got it wrong.

    In other words, it was a report of 26 now wildly famous writers who endured hefty rejections earlier in their careers.

    Rejection.

    Is it a topic to which you can relate?

    California Pacific Coast. Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows.

    Stephen King collected his rejection slips on a nail, until he received so many the nail would no longer hold them. Then, he switched to a spike and kept on writing.

    Sylvia Plath, one of the country’s most renowned poets, once said, “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.”

    I shared these insights with a friend this week, who had just undergone a pretty grisly rejection of her own. An essay she had been tirelessly working on was met with a hefty dose of harsh criticism at a writer’s conference. It made her mad; after all, she had poured a lot of work into her piece. She was determined to not let it get her down, she said. Quite the opposite: the criticism made her more determined to get that darn essay published.

    The beauty of it is that rejection is a universal story among all good writers. If you haven’t encountered a snarly rejection, a “No thanks” that at least momentarily stabs you in the heart, I submit you’re not working hard enough as an artist.

    Look at Sylvia Plath. Her rejections were reminders that she was, at the very least, hard at work.

    I heard the story of a salesman who gloried in the numerous rejections he encountered. For every 10 or so rejections he received, he reasoned, he was met with one success. That meant that by the time he received 100 “no’s,” he would have received 10 “yes’s.” And 10 yes’s were all he needed to be a wild success.

    How’s that for attitude?

    Every time I receive a rejection for a piece – be it via a literary journal, a magazine, or elsewhere – I do a little dance. Because each rejection is, for me, a reminder that I am at least putting myself out there.

    Think about it. The only way to guarantee a “No” is to not try at all.

    And you never know what doors might open if you simply give your work a chance.

    When a popular writing newsletter sponsored a writing contest with the prompt “Why I Write,” I decided to give it a go. I knew the chances of winning any contest were slim, but I found the topic so compelling – and I felt I had much to explore under that umbrella – that I sketched out an essay and sent it off.

    It didn’t win.

    However, a year later, I pitched to Writer’s Digest. And you know what? They said “Yes.” The piece, “Artmaking,” was published in March.

    I used to (nerd that I am) keep a tally sheet next to my computer with two columns: “A” (for “Acceptance”) and “R” (for “Rejection”). I’ll give you one guess which column racked up the colorful strike marks.

    I don’t do that anymore, but I do hold on to every rejection I receive. For me, like Plath, they show me I try. And besides, they might just make some really intriguing bathroom wallpaper someday.

    What is your best tale of rejection? How do you handle rejection? Is it something you fear?

     

    Category Books, Inspiration, News, Quotes, Self-doubt, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,, | 7 Comments

  2. How Safe is Your Family From Your Art?

    March 12, 2012 by katemeadows

    What do you do if, say, you want to write about your Great Aunt Mabel and how she was the first homecoming queen of the town of Xelops, but your Great Aunt Mabel is a) a very private person and b) rather cantankerous?

    What if you have written a piece that centers on a family drama (a divorce, say) and you know your own perspective of how that drama played out would offend the people on which it is centered?

    Desert hike, Anaheim Hills, CA. Copyright 2012 Kate Meadows

    Do you write? Do you share?

    Or do you wait?

    Well, it depends on what matters more to you: getting the story told or preserving particular relationships.

    A few years ago, I wrote a series of essays that largely centered on my grandparents – two people who were never in love and who, after 51 years of marriage, broke it off with a bitter divorce. As I was writing about my upbringing, my work at my grandparents’ tree nursery, memories drifted back to me, but not all of them were happy.

    I remembered the way my grandma always tried to hide her cigarette smoking and how I’d find cigarette butts under gardening gloves in the spare bedroom. I remembered the smell of the iced tea glasses, how I always wondered if they had been washed. I remembered my grandparents’ blank stares into the back yard, the way they always sat on opposite ends of the table, never held hands, slept in separate bedrooms.

    I wanted to submit some of these essays for publication, but I wasn’t sure I was entirely comfortable doing it. My grandfather had passed, but my grandma was still alive. I knew if any of the essays got published, she would know or find out. How would she respond? I didn’t think it would be good.

    Was it worth it to me? To pursue publication at the expense of jeopardizing a relationship? I talked about it with my mom (this particular set of grandparents were her in-laws) and she said, very bluntly, “You’re going to have to wait until Grandma dies to do anything with those.”

    I couldn’t tell if she was being serious.

    But she is always about preserving relationships over everything else, so after thinking about it, I knew she meant it.

    About a year later, rather unexpectedly, my grandma did die. I hadn’t pursued publication of the essays as fervently as I had initially imagined. I had submitted a few pieces here and there, and the rejections had trickled in. But I realized I had been submitting those pieces ignorantly, with my eye solely on the prize. If publication had happened, I would figure out a way to deal with the grandma issue.

    It wasn’t the right way to go about it. After talking to my mom and some other trusted writer friends, I knew my relationship with my grandma was worth more than an early recognition in some top literary magazine.

    Another way to tackle this problem comes from writer Martha Sherrill, who ditched a promising memoir about her father because a family secret she was not willing to expose had surfaced during her writing. Her solution?

    Turn it into fiction.

    According to an article in Writer’s Digest, Sherrill made the decision to repay a sizable advance for the memoir to keep that family secret safe. Her family was too important to her, she said. Her novel, The Ruins of California, was later published. You can read the story here.

    What about you? When your art collides against your family or other loved ones, what do you do? What will you do? What is the most important thing? Is your family safe, or not?

    Category Creativity, Home, Life Stories, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments