Learning from failure: My tale of rejection, redemption, and writing
Today I’d like to tell you about my failed short story and how I’ve pulled out of revising it after several months. Along the way I’ll riff a little about rejection and depression and true independence and learning by doing.
An opportunity came up last spring to submit a 3,000-word short story to an anthology featuring historical women doing daring deeds. It felt like a perfect fit. My novel is historical; my protag is a kickass woman. This short story could slip into a similar theme stream. Plus, I needed to start writing again. Up until then the year had been spent mired in the mud of sending queries to literary agents asking if they’d be willing to represent my novel to traditional publishers.
True independence is independence from falsehood.
For a newbie like me, this querying stage of getting a book published is a shock. You hammer-write your book, wearing away the letters on your keyboard. Researching, writing, revising, hiring pros to teach craft and give feedback (then in my case), deleting the entire manuscript, and starting all over with more research, writing and revision when five years later, you look up bleary-eyed, a quivering smile on your trembling lips and whisper, “I’m done,” only to find out, oh, no, honey, it’s not that simple. You gotta convince an agent that your baby is pretty.
So, I’d buckled down. Like hiking a path up a mountain when you turn a corner expecting the peak and nope, the path is still there, only steeper, I’d tightened my shoelaces and begun climbing again. Only in this stage I’m researching agents, looking at comparable books to mine to identify presses, paying for agents who have side gigs to review/edit query letters, torturing myself into writing a synopsis (condensing my 87,000-word novel into a summary). Every week I email pitches out to carefully culled agent names, but still, it feels less like curation and more like I’m sending a paper airplane over the edge of a publisher canyon abyss. Occasionally I’d receive a rejection email, but most of the time my silent inbox mocked me.
I get it: Publishing industry professionals are overwhelmed with the number of books being written now. They’re short-staffed with exploding inboxes and implicit pressure to find The Next Bestseller. My story about Jo van Gogh just isn’t sparking. Another “untold woman’s story.” In the seconds that they (or their editorial assistant or intern) scan my letter, it’s not grabbing attention.
And, frankly, I knew I’d just begun. Before long I had 50 rejections or no responses to queries. One writing coach said to plan on sending out at least 125. One hundred and twenty-five. I clung to words of realism and encouragement from Courtney Maum
and Publishing Confidential here on Substack. But, still, it’s a slog.
So, in April, like the proverbial breath of fresh air, when this call for submissions of fictional short stories about feisty women came into my inbox, I was thrilled. A short story? No problem! I’d get published. No brainer! Plus, I’m pretty feisty. It’s a shoe-in.
The Short Story Saga
I hadn’t written a short story before, so good student that I am, I bought James Scott Bell’s craft eBook How to Write Short Stories and studied it. I was especially intrigued by what he says is the key to writing a good short story: It will have a moment after which nothing will ever be the same. (His wonderful narrative Golden is a masterpiece example.)
A moment that changes everything.
A moment after which circumstances or a point of view or an individual’s perspective gets so jarred, there’s no going back. Like burnt toast or a broken mirror. Once burned or busted, try as we might, the repair can’t bring restoration back to its original state.
A shattering moment.
I love this idea. The mental cobwebs accumulating from months of querying are wiped out. What kind of moment would change everything. Death, illness, revealing a secret…I’m looking at everything through a new lens now.
I charge into historical research choosing to deepen my knowledge of the time period
overlapping my novel—around the turn of the 20th century. France is crafting a new democratic identity. Industrialists have formed a nouveau riche class, replacing the aristocracy of the jettisoned monarchy, and introducing the idea of wealth obtained through industry instead of inheritance.
Masses of people still struggle with poverty though. Workhouses crop up taking advantage of hunger. Children are abandoned into orphanages when families can’t afford to feed them. While in the center of Paris the Champs-Elysée is a brilliant ribbon of new asphalt, the outer arrondissements of Paris are cobble-stoned slums.
In an intriguing intersection of supply-meets-demand, the high-fashion industry grows rapidly as haute couture captures the bourgeoisie’s desire to flaunt money. The invention of the Singer sewing machine speeds up production. A clever group of sisters, the Callot Soeurs, open up the first women-owned fashion design houses to wild success.
Women are pushing against other traditional boundaries, making headlines. American Annie Londonderry decides to ride a bicycle around the world. She finds sponsors and publicists who chronicle her journey. Headlines can’t decide whether to gulp at her bloomers, her physical strength or (gasp!) that her husband stayed home to care for the kids!
But under all of this energetic glee there’s a poisonous idea spreading. Eugenics. Its proponents hide their own ambition behind the ugly lie that to improve the human species only “desirable” people should have children. The “undesirables” are discouraged and even prevented from reproducing.
OK, I’ve got lots to work with here to write a short story. All I need is a protagonist. My female feisty lead.
Enter Nadine. I choose a coming-of-age 17 yo. I love the idea of youth challenging the system. Her father is an industrialist, of course. Her mother died early. So, Nadine is on a fast-track trajectory to a future of a “desirable” marriage and babies. She hasn’t chosen this destiny, but she’s a girl under the thumb of her father. It’s assumed she’ll be obedient. Like today’s youth who have the audacity to challenge the status quo, I imagine Nadine feeling a struggling urgency to discover who she is, not what her small world tells her to be.
And remember, as I tell her story, it must lead to a shattering moment.
So, fast forward, it’s June now and I’ve crafted a story and revised it a lot. The 3,000-word limit is daunting—I keep running long. So, I hire a freelance editor and we go back and forth. I revise via her suggestions. In mid-July I’m finally done— voila! —and submit the story to the anthology editors.
Mid-August I hear back: There’s too much going on, honey. My fascination with all that historical info cut into Nadine’s character arc and development. Too many sub-plots. And you know what? It’s true. So, I set to work revising, removing characters, giving it a new setting, and zeroing in. In September, I resubmit. In November I hear back: Still not there yet.
So, I dove back in. Following their recommendations to add more seeds of doubt in Nadine’s mind, even adding a scene, then culling back to the 3,000-word mark. It reminded me of my years in public speaking. The short talks always took more time to write than the long ones. Each word has to carry its load. I find extraneous language, make each line of dialogue do more work to convey meaning, ensure each scene leads to the next, and so hopefully, up the tension.
But this round isn’t going well. It feels like I am wandering in the weeds, way down in the dirt and have lost the through line of the narrative. Nadine’s voice is gone. The story feels like a spider in which all eight legs are simultaneously scrambling to run in different directions.
Yesterday I thought, “Maybe I’m starting the story in the wrong spot?”
[Scream.]
OK, so, I’m setting it aside. Withdrawing my space in the anthology, which honestly the editors have been generous to hold open.
Gathering Up Fruitage, Anyway
So, did I just waste six months? In the spirit of this week’s Thanksgiving, here are the gentle ideas I’m harvesting.
Learning by doing. Textbook instruction is valuable for establishing a framework on how to approach a problem. But actually, doing the work, applying the ideas, is way different. To truly learn, you gotta do, and then over time, hopefully those lessons become second nature, setting you up to learn the next hard thing. I’m recognizing that I learned by doing the work.
Fighting depression. The weeks between submissions in which I heard nothing from the anthology committee—coupled with the rejections and silence of literary agents—did a mental number on me. I allowed the silence to open a door with black thoughts like “you can’t write,” “you’re so bad no one can bring themselves to tell you,” “you’ve wasted your time,” “you’re wasting your life” …you get it. What pulled me out was (let’s call it) a mini-shattering moment. One day I thought, how does this circumstance shift if I think about it without judgment? Instead of as “good” (tickertape parade for my writing!) or “bad” (no one loves me), trust that I’m following my heart. Be open for the next idea. This lifted the gloom a bit.
After rejection. You’d think with my grand little inspiration, maybe a miracle would magically make my short story acceptable? Nope (there’s that judgment again). Instead, it told me there’s more work to do. The editorial feedback gave me the gift of seeing the work through others’ eyes. I saw the flaws they saw. Frankly, they serve as surrogates for the reader. I want the story to be worth the reader’s investment. Yes, I’ve also invested a lot in Nadine’s story, and I want to do her justice. But, importantly, to see through another’s perspective opens up critical thinking, right? Can’t see the forest for the trees.
True independence. I’ve packed a lot in here, but I want to end with one last idea. Whether it’s in Nadine’s journey, or my writing journey, or literally being a human being living in these times, what’s come to me is that true independence is independence from falsehood. In all its forms. Whether it’s eugenics, or limiting roles for women, or the personal false story that I’m unworthy or unable to write, I’m grateful for this. I’m still learning about this.
This realization is not that big “shattering moment” yet, but I’m working on it.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Warmly,
P.S. I’m not giving up on Nadine’s story. At some point I’ll complete it and let you know.
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