The Five Stages of Rejection

Hey there, Internet Audience. As regular readers (all two of you) may remember, a while ago we began sending out queries to agents for the first time. It did not go well. And to all the other aspiring writers out there who will probably have to go through the same experience we did, I'd like to take a moment to talk about what that actually felt like.

Dealing with rejection is a strange experience. I mean, Kristy and I have had to deal with setbacks before, but not like this. This was an entire industry clucking their tongues, shaking their heads, and saying "Nope. Not good enough." This was an entirely different monster.

And you know what's weird? What we went through while dealing with this seemed oddly familiar. Like something we vaguely remembered learning about before, but neither of us could put a finger on it. Until today. So today, I'd like to present to you, Internet Audience: The Five Stages of Dealing Rejection.

Stage One: Denial
"No, they can't mean that! They must have just misunderstood my query or something! Or maybe they got my email address mixed up with someone else! Their rejection can't possibly mean that I'm a bad writer!"

I'M NOT CRAZY! STOP CALLING ME CRAZY!

It's amazing how quickly this stage sets in. Literally seconds after reading those rejections, these thoughts started forming. And I guess, in a way, that's everyone's initial reaction to bad news. The instinct to rub your eyes, pinch yourself, and convince yourself that it's just a bad dream. It kind of felt like floating in a bubble of blissful, willful ignorance.

It didn't last, though. That's the thing about bubbles. They all burst.

Stage Two: Anger
This is the part where we got all mad and indignant. HOW DARE THEY REJECT ME! THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT.

It happens to the best of us. We promised ourselves that we wouldn't go to that place, but all that did was make it even more surprising when we got there. There's no magical secret to making this stage go away. It's all emotional. It ends when it ends. The only thing we found that we actually had any control over whatsoever was how we dealt with it. And if there's one piece of advice we can give to other aspiring writers going through this, it's this: Never burn any bridges.

I immediately regret this decision

Just like in a job, just like in relationships, just like in life. Never, ever sit down and pen that angry profanity-laden diatribe that tells the other person exactly what you think of them. It never works out well.

Stage Three: Bargaining
Ah, the bargaining. It's the part where we started asking ourselves "What if I do this? Will that fix it?"

Unlike the last stage, this part we wanted to last as long as possible. Because for us, this is when we stopped being dreamers and started being writers. Because those rose coloured glasses we'd been wearing? Gone. Smashed. Destroyed.

Goddammit! I liked those!

This stage forced us to take a cold, hard look at our story and that's when we finally realized it.

Something doesn't work.

By no means was this an easy thing to do. Not by a long shot. But it's incredibly useful. Because a manuscript or a query, no matter how flawed, always looks perfect when viewed in the warm, flickering candle-light of delusion. Only in the harsh, flourescent light of rejection do the flaws become obvious.

And BOY do those flaws become obvious. It's actually amazing how obvious they are! Things we found "cute" and "clever" in our query all of a sudden revealed themselves for what they were: two-ton anchors weighing the thing down. And that's when we realized something.

It's the Bargaining. The Bargaining that we did with Reality. That's when we grew.

Stage Four: Depression
This part? Not fun. Not fun AT ALL. This is the part when we started thinking: Maybe we're not good enough. Maybe we'll never be good enough. Maybe we were never meant to be writers.

Why doesn't anyone like my story about robot cowboys set in old-timey England?

Those thoughts were toxic. Those thoughts were poison. And, like the Anger Stage, there wasn't a whole lot we could do to shorten this part. But, like the Anger Stage, what we could control is that we didn't do something stupid.

Something stupid like quit. Something stupid like give up. Because the next part's coming up...

Stage Five: Acceptance Rebound
Now, I know, I know. Normally, this stage is called Acceptance. Because this is supposed to be the part where we decide to accept things that you can't change. But this is the one part where we depart from the Norm and forge our own path.

This is the part where we picked ourselves off the ground, dusted ourselves off, and threw ourselves back into the fight. Now, it's a saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But this was different.

Because we're not the same person anymore. We've grown. We've learned. And maybe, just maybe, we're slightly better writers now. So we're going to hit the ground running, and we're going to run even harder and faster than the first time. Because that's the last thing they're going to expect.

Awww, I'm so sad and dejected and BOOM! WEREN'T EXPECTING THAT, WERE YOU?!?

How about you? Have you ever had to deal with rejection?

Will I ever get enough of London? (yes... that's enough now)

(Thanks to those of you who expressed interest in receiving a copy of my paper - I'm not ignoring you, will email off Thurs evening!)


Wow, if you thought I bought a lot of books at the weekend, wait til you see how many I got on Wednesday with Claire (who, remembering her luggage allowance, was rather more circumspect).  That's for another day, though.  For today I'll just show off this photo of me meeting Claire (taken by Darlene - who joined us for dinner, giving me the delight of seeing her twice in one week.)

Tonight, tired, and having succumbed to the inevitable cold (all my housemates have it - it was only a matter of time) I just wanted to write a quick question...


This is to all the bloggers who have met other bloggers in person.  I can say, without hesitation, that all the bloggers I've met have been lovely, Claire being (of course) no exception.  But what does change quite a lot is how similar or different they are to/from how I imagined them.  Some bloggers - perhaps especially Karen and Thomas - were exactly how I'd envisioned them.  Others, while lovely, were lovely in a whole other way that I'd anticipated.


I've been lucky - I've met probably 30-35 bloggers in person (I'll have to do a proper count sometime) so I can make these sorts of statements - but I'd love for you to answer, if you can!  How have your face-to-face blogger-to-blogger meetings gone?


And, for an even smaller group of respondents... was I how you imagined I'd be, when you met me?!

Waiting on Wednesday # 65 - Shooting Stars by Allison Rushby

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

My pick:

Summary from Goodreads:

Meet Josephine Foster, or Zo Jo as she’s called in the biz. The best pint-sized photographer of them all, Jo doesn’t mind doing what it takes to get that perfect shot, until she’s sent on an undercover assignment to shoot Ned Hartnett—teen superstar and the only celebrity who’s ever been kind to her—at an exclusive rehabilitation retreat in Boston. The money will be enough to pay for Jo’s dream: real photography classes, and maybe even quitting her paparazzi gig for good. Everyone wants to know what Ned’s in for. But Jo certainly doesn’t know what she’s in for: falling in love with Ned was never supposed to be part of her assignment.

Shooting Stars by Allison Rushby

February 28th 2012 by Walker & Co

Sounds cute!

Londoning (the books)

Time to share with you the books I bought in London!  Blogger has a new interface thingummy, so I'm hoping things will go to plan... if I press the wrong buttons and everything turns out enormous or slanting to the right or something, then forgive me.  (Is the font still a readable size?)


First up are the two books I bought at the conference.  My heart more or less stopped beating when I walked into the conference hall on the second day - there was the most middlebrow bookstall in front of me.  Elizabeth von Arnim, E.M. Delafield, Viragos everywhere... Not the cheapest selection in the world, but I did manage to pick up a couple of gems:

Opus 7 by Sylvia Townsend Warner: the first book she published, this is a book-length poem and thus not my normal cup of tea, but I'll give it a go.  Plus... beautiful, no?


Novels and Novelists by Katherine Mansfield: a collection of her reviews, which is rather wonderful.  Lots of unfamiliar names in the index, and thus probably a more accurate representation of the period.  It does, serendipitously, include a review of Elizabeth von Arnim's Christopher and Columbus, which I was reading the day I bought this.


Off I trotted during some free time, and down to Judd Books, wherein I bought these: 

At Freddie's and Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald.  There are plenty of Penelope Fitzgerald novels around, but I fell in love with this series of editions from Flamingo - another incentive to explore more PF territory.


The rest of the weekend's purchases are shown, colour-coded...

Blow on a Dead Man's Embers by Mari Strachan: I recently loved Strachan's first novel, so was delighted to pick her second up for £1.


Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark: it's no secret that I adore this novel, but the copy I read was from the library - I've been on the look-out for a cheap copy for a while.


The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay: somehow this was not amongst my Macaulay collection, despite being perhaps her most famous.  Thanks to Mary for spotting this outside the bookshop!

Epigraph on George Moore by Charles Morgan: I love authors writing about other authors, and although I've only read one book by Morgan, and none by Moore, this seemed like one I rather wanted to own...


Plagued by the Nightingale by Kay Boyle: between recognising Boyle's name, an instinctive covetousness for any Virago Modern Classic, and the cover painting, I couldn't leave this behind.  The cover is 'Portrait of a Young Woman' by Meredith Frampton, one of my favourite paintings in the Tate Gallery.


The Old Maid by Edith Wharton: I've been wanting to read more Wharton, and this is perfect for my research into 1920s spinsters - not to mention a rather lovely copy.

T.H. White: A Biography by Sylvia Townsend Warner: another one I should probably have on hand for my research - making this book buying haul, on the whole, an academic excursion... no?

Londoning (a many varied post...)

I'm back to what will hopefully become normal schedule now - and several busy days in London to report! This picture is a sneak preview of what I will talk about...


As I mentioned in my last post, I've been attending a Middlebrow Conference called The Popular Imagination and the Dawn of Modernism, and very enjoyable it was too. (Hello to the people I met there, if you're now reading this!) Well, it was enjoyable tinged with nerves, unsurprisingly, since this was my first time presenting outside of a graduate conference in Oxford. My paper was called (laboured pun alert) The Love Child, The Witch and The Spinster: The Fantastic Middlebrow in Two 1920s Novels. Those novels were The Love Child by Edith Olivier and Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner - both, incidentally, very good indeed - although even at a Middlebrow Conference, where names like E.M. Delafield, Elizabeth von Arnim, and E.H. Young were thrown around confidently, nobody had read The Love Child...

I was on a wonderfully cohesive panel, all of talking about 1920s spinsters, including a paper on E.H. Young's Miss Mole and The Missess Mallett, which delighted me. In the interests of keeping their research private, I'd better not share too much - and, indeed, with some vague notion of Intellectual Property I shan't post my paper on here, but I'm happy to email it to anybody who fancies reading 3000 words on those novels. Just email me, or mention it in the comments. Oh, and while I was there I had the very great pleasure of meeting Tanya - we'd pre-arranged to meet up, and it was so lovely to have someone I 'knew' at the event.

Rather than any intellectual recap here, then, I shall instead relate the hilarious train journey I had on the Thursday, sitting opposite a delightful mother-and-daughter pair. The daughter, I quickly learnt, was almost seven years old, and called Megan. They were on their way to Disneyland - accompanied, I should add, by a singing Zac Efron doll ('Can I Have This Dance?' from High School Musical 3, since you ask) and a non-singing Justin Bieber doll. Megan was convinced that Justin had cellulitis (how on EARTH does she know this word?) and ignored her mother's correction that she meant laryngitis. After a while of silently laughing to myself, I started to scribble down their conversation... it makes the mother sound a bit mean, but you should know that she was clearly joking throughout. It was evident that they had an amazing mother/daughter relationship, and just being near them brightened up my day. And it might brighten up yours...

Megan: What are you getting me for my birthday, Mum?

Mum: The trip to Disneyland is for your birthday! What more do you want from me, blood?

Megan: Daddy's getting me a necklace, and Nanna's giving me money. Will Auntie Michelle get me Barbies?

Mum: No love, honestly, she won't get you Barbies, I promise you.

Megan: Why not?

Mum: She hates them, love. She thinks Barbies oppress women.

Megan: [pause] I want a Barbie!

Mum: You can buy one with your own money, I'm not buying you one. Seven year olds don't need Barbies.

Megan: I love Barbies! I'd play with them more, only I've got all my homework to do.

Mum: Oh yes! Is that before or after I make you scrub the kitchen floor? And clean the toilet with a toothbrush?

And on it went, putting me into a great frame of mind for the conference. But my three days of conferencing did not lead to a well-earned rest in Oxford on Sunday. No, it saw me back on the good old Oxford-to-Paddington train. This time with unadulterated bookish fun in mind...


I met up with not one, not two, but three delightful bloggers on Sunday. Guest of honour was Darlene, over from Canada, and also very honourable were Mary and Rachel. (Mary isn't fond of being in photographs, so she was chief-in-charge photographer.) I arrived shortly after them at the cafe of the National Gallery, and from then on we spent the next five or so hours chatting nineteen-to-the-dozen, buying armfuls of books, eating quantities of cake, and following the Virginia Woolf Guided Walk (before sloping off to, er, eat cake).


I'll devote another post to the books I bought, but they were several - from the shops on Charing Cross Road. In Henry Porde Books there were dozens of our-sort-of-novels (Delafield, Arnim, and Young all featured here too) most of which had one lady's name inside them. I can't remember it now... Muriel Nicholas, maybe? Sadly my tastes were rather *too* close to this fine lady's, since our libraries overlapped somewhat too much. I rather riled Rachel by the number of times my response, to proffered books, was "I've got it." Not, of course "I've read it"...

When I meet up with bloggers, it never feels like I'm meeting a stranger. I know their voices so well from their blogs, and (especially with people like Darlene) feel a very real warmth and affection from them - even when I have never heard their voice or seen their face. As we traipsed through bookshops and along streets, Darlene and I bonded over our shared inability to navigate ourselves out of a dead-end street. Darlene also brought us all some lovely maple Canadian candies in a Canadian tin - I love tins and boxes for stationery and so forth, and (it goes without saying) I love sweets. Serendipitously, Rachel and Darlene had won my giveaway of As It Was by Helen Thomas, so I was able to hand out those too. I just felt bad not to have anything to press into Mary's hands!

It was such a wonderful day. Really one to remember. Here's a final picture, us showing off our spoils from Bea's of Bloomsbury - and Rachel looking sad because she'd bravely decided to save her cupcakes for her mum and sister, and couldn't join in our icing-consumption. Oh, how I do love all the joys of blogging!

Read Your Own Books Read-A-Thon: Finish Line!

The Read Your Own Books Read-A-Thon is over! Thanks to ww.bibliophilicbookblog.com for hosting it :)

My goal was to read 3 books....I fail. :/ The only day I could really read was Saturday, and I read 1 book.

But still, I'm glad I finally read Divergent by Veronica Roth. It has been on my TBR pile for so long!

I also managed to read a couple of pages from Going Bovine by Libba Bray. It was my goal to finish it, but I guess it will have to be in another time :)

Anyway, did you meet your goal?

Book Review: The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

Title: The Girl of Fire and Thorns

Author: Rae Carson

Series: Fire and Thorns #1

Release Date: September 20th, 2011

Publisher: Harper Collins

Age: Young Adult

Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness.

Elisa is the chosen one.

But she is also the younger of two princesses, the one who has never done anything remarkable. She can’t see how she ever will.

Now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king—a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs the chosen one, not a failure of a princess.

And he’s not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies seething with dark magic are hunting her. A daring, determined revolutionary thinks she could be his people’s savior. And he looks at her in a way that no man has ever looked at her before. Soon it is not just her life, but her very heart that is at stake.

Elisa could be everything to those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. If she finds the power deep within herself. If she doesn’t die young.

Most of the chosen do.

I was so excited about this book! Elisa sounded different than the usual protagonist and I'm glad it didn't disappointed me.

Elisa is sixteen years old and the chosen one. One day, when she was just newly born, a light surrounded her and now she has a jewel in her body, marking her as the chosen one. The chosen one is destined to fulfill a prophecy, but no one can see Elisa as the chosen one. She's just a young, fat and dumb princess.

I really liked Elisa. She starts as this shy and sometimes dumb girl but transforms into a strong and intelligent woman. It wasn't easy, and her journey is long and difficult, starting with her "secret" marriage and then being kidnapped.

Sometimes I thought the other characters asked too much from her. From the beginning it is kind of obvious nobody thinks she can fulfill the prophecy, but at the same time nobody helped her. They kept secrets from her, like what exactly does the prophecy says, or what are the dangers she has to face when the time comes.

But it works out because Elisa finally realizes she has to be strong and do things for herself to survive. Her journey is full of adventures and a sweet and very innocent romance, which left me surprised and kind of sad at the end.

They only thing that kept me from loving this book 100% was that I thought it was kind of ridiculous (and not at all realistic) the fact that she had a jewel in her belly, or that the jewel seemed to had a life of it own.

Overall, I really liked The Girl of Fire and Thorns and I can't wait for the sequel, The Crown of Embers. I enjoyed Elisa's adventures and I think she's a great example for young girls.

More about this book at www.raecarson.com, Goodreads, Amazon, The Book Depository.