Today, we are happy to be hosting Marcie Colleen on Nerdy Chicks Rule. Author and Education Consultant, Marcie Colleen, is an expert on creating highly acclaimed Teacher’s Guides that align picture books and middle grade novels with the Common Core and other state mandated standards.  She is the Education Consultant for Picture Book Month and the the Curriculum Developer for Time Traveler Tours & Tales. Her work with Picture Book Month has been recognized by School Library Journal and the Children’s Book Council.  Visit her at www.thisismarciecolleen.com.

Scroll to the bottom of this post to learn about a great new online picture book class from Marcie and Sudipta!

How Rejection Leads to Stellar Revision

Rejection is inevitable.

Writers face rejection.  Often.

Sure we can try to avoid rejection.  Maybe slavishly follow trends. Maybe self-publish. Maybe give up.

After all, rejection hurts.  It stings.  We should try to avoid it at all costs, right?

Wrong.

In fact, we should welcome rejection. Allow rejection to become part of our journey.  Why?

There is value in rejection. Rejection can make us better writers.

Here are three ways rejection can lead to stellar—publishable—revisions.

Shine a light.

Ever receive a rejection and think “well, they clearly didn’t ‘get it’”? It happens. After all, writing (and reading) is subjective. But what happens if you receive rejection after rejection from editors or agents who didn’t seem to “get it”? If you are seeing a pattern, it’s time to revise. In fact, the unwritten rule is if two to three people give you the same feedback, definitely revise.

This happened to me while first subbing The Adventure of the Penguinaut. Several rejections referred to the manuscript as a “flightless bird who wants to fly” story.  Problem was, I never wanted to write a story about a penguin who wants to fly. As those rejections so clearly stated, this concept has been done. . .a lot.

So, what was the issue? Did all of those editors just not understand my story? Or was there something flawed in my plot that led them to believe my theme was different than intended?

Upon closer examination, I realized that I had mentioned flying five times within The Adventure of the Penguinaut. No wonder they all thought flying was important to my protagonist.  I then tightened, stream-lined, and focused my story more on Orville’s need for independence.  And the next time we went out on sub with The Adventure of the Penguinaut not one editor misunderstood it and it triumphantly sold to Scholastic.

“The drawer” is good.

Rejection is upsetting. If you are like me, a rejection can send you under the covers with chocolate, wine, and a box of tissues.

Rejection leaves me not wanting to look at the manuscript for some time. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I cram it into the proverbial drawer and tearfully wonder how long I will toil on this one silly story.

It took me over two years to write The Adventure of the Penguinaut and, during that period, I think it spent more time in the drawer than on my desktop. What a long and tedious process!

But, with each critique and each rejection, I needed time away. And even though I thought I was taking a break from the story, what I was really doing was allowing my brain, my heart, my inner muse to subconsciously think through the issues so that when I took the manuscript out of the drawer again, I knew what needed to be done. Sometimes it is less about finding your story than it is to let your story come to you.

Rejection slows down the process, for sure. But when I read my original draft of Penguinaut, horribly titled The Glimmering Iceberg in the Sky, I am thankful for those two years of development.  No way was my first draft ready for publication. Thank you to all of the gatekeepers who slowed me down and saved me the embarrassment of anyone reading The Glimmering Iceberg in the Sky.

Eye of the tiger.

Lastly, rejection grows us as writers. As novelist James Michener said, “Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”

Writers learn so much from rejection—about ourselves, our work, the market, the business. Rejection forces honest assessment. It makes us shine sunlight on our shortcomings so that we can address them. It forces us to read our words the way others see them, not in the perfect form that we as authors imagine them to be. Even authors who choose to self-publish should, from time to time, submit themselves to rejection. Writers who have never experienced rejection are no different than children who get awards for everything they do and are never told “no.”

Rejection pushes. Rejection sharpens. Rejection gives writers something to prove.

It’s time to learn to cherish rejection. It pains at first. It’s ok to grab the chocolate ice cream and a spoon and hide under the covers for a day or two.  But then comes the realization: this story just isn’t up to snuff. That is a powerful and freeing moment—freeing because, making a story better is entirely within our power. We can’t change publishing, but we can change the quality of our work.

Oh, and chocolate is absolutely still appropriate (check out “The Sweet Taste of Rejection”—a past post on this very idea http://writeroutine.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-sweet-taste-of-rejection.html )

(Also, for more advice in this vein, check out this post from Kami: How No Helps You Grow)

Starting on April 13, 2015, Marcie is going to be teaching a new online course in Picture Book Revision at Kidlit Writing School. This course will be co-taught by Sudipta and by Agent Susan Hawk of the Bent Agency as well.

For more information and to register for this awesome course, please visit the registration page. If you sign up by March 27, you will get a FREE 20-minute manuscript review with either Marcie or Sudipta!