The Editor Regrets...

Another bloody rejection. This time from Woman's Weekly. It was a nice, polite rejection, but a rejection nonetheless.

It is true what they say though, the first one is the hardest. After that, getting rejected gets easier. Hardly dents your tough writer's carapace at all. Pffft, you think, sure I didn't expect they'd publish it. Indeed there isn't a mark on many of the ones that come back, which makes you wonder if it got read at all. Anyway, I'll revise it and send it on to someone else. And wait another two months to be told that the editor regrets.

Part of the problem -- leaving aside the ridiculous notion that the story just didn't cut it* -- is the limited markets for short stories these days. And most of those, now, just want very short stories indeed. When I was growing up, there were several stories in every woman's mag and I loved them, especially the ones with the glamorous illustrations of willowy, doe eyed women in floppy hats. I still have a few I clipped twenty odd years ago and kept. But the days of the three two -page romances in every issue are gone. We seem to have substituted those with celeb revelations and gossip: instead of inhabiting the lives of those long haired sylphs we now follow the habits of the rich and dim. And they really don't make for heroine material at all.

* Perish the thought!

Fecketty feck

Okay, writer's block.

Having banged away on the keyboard (oooo-er, missus) like billy-o at this historical gothic thing I have skidded to a complete halt. I am trying to write in the M & B house style and frankly, I am having some deal of difficulty.

I think part of the problem is that in trying to stick so closely to an accepted format, I have lost the passsion for the plot and the characters. I am so focused on the technique that I seem to have misplaced my rhythmn. When I began writing this thing, it consumed me -- I loved the setting, the heroine and the dark, difficult hero. Now it's tiresome, trying to make sure it fits the format. I think I need to just write it as I want and then revise for format.

The really annoying thing is that I can see the setting and the characters so vividly that writing this ought to be easy. Drat.

Wannabes

I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 this afternoon. It's that one about numbers and stuff, that I only ever hear by accident, but every time I do I forget that I disliked maths at school. Anyway, they were talking about means and medians and the like and somewhere in the middle of all that was a fascinating bit about how we all think we're much better than the average bear. These over-inflated expectations of ourselves lead some of us to believe we can sing/dance/model or whatever. Hence the cringe-making auditionees at the X-Factor. (The best bit, in my opinion.) As I was scrubbing the sink ( I was cleaning the bathroom at the time) it occurred to me that when you look at (most) of the people who actually win those talent show contests, they're people who have actually tried to learn a bit about singing and the art of performing and so on. It's the ones who only warble to their deluded relatives at weddings that are the loopers who think they have talent.

Which led me to wonder about would-be writers and if there are loads of X-Factor type wannabe scribes floating about who really, really think they can write, like, you know and if you don't just really really, like get their stuff, then you're just so wrong, like. Indeed, I have run across some of their badly written stuff on the internet. And it is teeth-clenchingly bad.

There are bound to be loads of letters on fiction editor's desks, telling them just why they were so wrong, like, you know, to, you know, reject their NOVEL and, like how they're just going to SEE, right, when they sell gazillions. Probably lots of them on perfumed notepaper and written in pink ink. And just like all those scary X-factor wannabes, surrounded by their adoring family -- the ones who run in and shake their tattooed fists at Simon Cowell* -- somebody must have fed the delusion that they had talent.

The thing is, I've written loads of stuff and about 90% of it has been published (all non-fiction, alas). I can spell and construct long sentences and use big hard words, but I would never, ever expect that my fiction would get published (and so far, it hasn't). I have a had a few rejections, most of them very helpful, in terms of improving what I write. And I pay attention to the advice and try to apply it. So why is it that people who can neither write nor construct a story nor seem to have had any practice at writing, other than rambling on the internet (okay, a bit like this) send stuff in to editors? And then get volcanically annoyed when they get rejected?

Now I no longer think that editors take far too long to get back to you. Now I am amazed they manage to get to any of the half-decent stuff at all. Er, not that my stuff is necessarily half-decent. It may be, someday....

*I actually like Cowell. Most of the time he tells people the truth about their performance. I just hate the way the process has made stuff ever more bland than before.

Happy New Year.

Resolutions:

1. The Usual (weight, exercise, detox);
2. Abstain from Alcohol and Chocolate for the Month of January;
3. Get Through January As Fast As I Can;
4. Acquire No More Speeding Tickets;
5. Use Public Transport More;
6. Get Summat Published.
7. Find A More Suitable Man.

Theme For The Year:

We Might As Well Dance.

(From either: "We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance" (Japanese proverb) or "Life may not be the party we hoped for… But, while we are here, we might as well dance!” (Maya Angelou) I like the sentiment of both...