Rejection

by Rain Trueax

My view, when I turn around, from where I write when in Tucson.

One of the things that is hardest about being a writer comes only if you put your work out there-- rejection. This is true for anyone who does creative work. Do it for yourself, and no risk. You are satisfying your creative need. Put it out for a contest or to try and sell it and bingo-- rejection. 

For me, I don't feel so much rejected for myself, but for the work that I personally love and why doesn't everyone? Yes, I do laugh when I write that because some people ridicule someone for saying that but a creative work is an offspring of someone's mind and emotions. Why would they not feel a part of us?

For a writer, rejection can come if you send the manuscript or even a query off to agents or editors and they don't bother to read it or if they do, they send back a form letter rejecting it. If they handwrite the rejection, that's a little less of a downer, but in the end, it's the same. They didn't like it for whatever reason.

If the writer can change what the editor/agent didn't like, they can try again. Back when I sent a few of my manuscripts off, I didn't want to change what they wanted. I felt it'd undo what my sense of the character or story was (this was in the 90s). Then, for years, I didn't send off anything. It was in 2011 that I realized writers were bypassing editors and agents. Indie publishing had become a reality. I didn't jump in as I knew I'd have to do some editing of my own for books written in the '90s. 

One big issue was how much our culture had changed since then in ways we don't always think about. Characters today, when away from home, have access to cell phones and are not dependent on a payphone. The experience of finding one and then finding the phone book had been ripped off would be foreign to younger people today. How information was gathered also changed as computers took over homes and even those phones. Since I didn't want to place the books in the '90s, a lot had to change.

I'd say the US culture and really that of many countries has changed a lot politically but that is generally left out of romances as unnecessarily dating them-- when someone reads them in 10 years (as unlike paperbacks, eBooks stay out here to be found on a search). Very few people want a political lecture in their romances. I am not sure how much religion has changed for how it impacts lives. More people went to church back then but the attitude toward it probably is pretty similar. Again though, most writers don't make religion a big part of the plot, unless they are writing for a religious agenda.  

An historical doesn't have the problem of changing times, as it was already written for its own time-- as best a writer understands it anyway. The thing is, the first books I brought out were all contemporary when I started at the end of 2011 with newly edited books (styles of writing had also changed in those nearly 20 years). By the middle of 2012, I'd brought out them all. The only real interest they got was when they were free. 

The first one out there, Desert Inferno (based in Southern Arizona) had over a thousand takers in a few days... when it was free. I am not sure any of those readers actually read it. That's the problem with free-- readers don't always read them. If they do read them, they sometimes give scathing reviews as being free they didn't respect it, and maybe it was also out of their usual favorite genre.

Maybe some would have given up right there, but the thing is-- I had my books out there. I also believed in them as novels that were romances. I thought someday readers would want what they offered. The jury is still out on that *s*.

Anyway, I decided recently to put the six Portland based contemporaries into Kindle Unlimited. To do that, I had to pull them from all other sites as Amazon only allows books in KU that are not anywhere else. If you are not familiar with the options a writer has. You can go wide, using a site like D2D, where your books are in Barnes and Noble, Google, etc. or you can go narrow, keep them all on Amazon. If you stay with just Amazon, you can put them into Kindle Unlimited, which means-- rules for KU.

My contemporaries were only selling a book now and then and I have the hope that for the readers of my historicals, who are subscribed to KU, they might be more open to trying a book set in their own time if it was free. Jury is still out on that too.

If the Portland romances don't find readers there, I can pull them out after three month and again go wide. To get readers, we will be doing some ads, as pretty much without ads, there is no way a writer will get their books seen. Well, maybe those with networks, but I don't have one of those. 

This blog has never attracted romance readers, but it has attracted creative people, and it's why for awhile, I am going to write about what to consider when bringing out a book on your lonesome. It is when you have to deal with rejection unless you are one of those who hit it big first time out. It does happen.

In dealing with rejection, there are many ways to not feel depressed about it. 

1.  In life, we cannot control how others see us or whether they want to be with us. We can only control ourselves. Where it comes to books, we can write the best book we know how. We can get a great cover and title, write a terrific blurb, but we cannot control how others will react to that. Feeling rejected is about letting someone else impact what you are doing more than what you are doing.
2.  There are a LOT of books out there as in millions currently available. How many books on Amazon?  The competition is intense. The fact that your book is not selling may just mean other books are selling more. It's not rejection. It's simply not being seen.
3.  Back to the first one. You can't please everybody. Some stick to writers and genres with which they are familiar. That's a choice we all have, and as someone who always orders the same thing in a restaurant, I understand *s*.

More to come on those contemporaries now in KU (Moon Dust, Second Chance, Evening Star, Bannister's Way, Hidden Pearl, and Her Dark Angel) regarding their plots, what attracted me to them, and maybe what's turned off readers is their not fitting into a genre, with which they were comfortable.

All the photos here are from this May - our little piece of Tucson desert.