On rejection

In amongst all the goat milking, wild raspberry picking and just generally rolling around in dirt, this summer of volunteering had its tough moments.

Rocking up somewhere completely new every two weeks can be hard. Dealing with some, let's say,

interesting

characters can be hard. Feeling the weight of your incompetence when faced with a roto-tiller and very large field, can be hard.

I dealt with it in the only way I know how: by writing it all down.

I never really meant to write a novel. Well, in a way I did - I gave myself a stern talking to the day after my 26th birthday, admonishing myself for reaching the ripe old age of 26 without having even a decent manuscript yet. "Why am I not published?" I'd moan to myself. "Why aren't literary agents and publishing houses clambering over themselves for my work?"

Erm, probably because you haven't written anything in so long. They have no idea you exist.

So while I dreamt of ending up with a completed book, mostly, I just wrote to make sense of things. I wrote to feel good. I wrote for something safe and familiar, when everything around me was the opposite.

And so I wrote, and I just... kept writing. It may sound over-simplified (or, if you're a writer, very annoying), but it really did transpire this way: a novel happened.

I wasn't sure what to do next. So I edited, overhauling my complete manuscript five times. I printed it out and edited again. I trawled the internet for every nugget of wisdom I could find about polishing drafts, query letters and synopses. I drew up a shortlist of agents, I asked friends for advice, I talked with freelance editors. With shaking hands, I handed my draft over to Phil and let him read it. After that, there was nothing left to do but send my submission package off to agents.

I was trembling with excitement as I sent that first email. It felt like a momentous occasion: I drank a glass of prosecco and even took a selfie at the very moment I pressed "send". I then proceeded to apply to nine more agents. Each time, I felt excited, like a balloon pumped full of air and let go. It felt like anything could happen.

Then I got rejected.

Not once, not twice, but a grand total of seven times.

I know that rejection is an inevitability for prospective authors. It's almost a rite of passage. I'm also not arrogant enough to assume that agents would be falling over themselves to work with me; an obscure, unpublished author. I had expected this.

But that doesn't mean it didn't sting.

Rejection sucks. It really, really does. It doesn't matter whether that's an agent knocking you back, or a university, or a boy/girl. Someone saying "you're not good enough" hits you somewhere deep and quiet. It hits you in a place that's painfully raw; somewhere you never usually let see the light of day.

And there's two things you can do. You can be wounded and hurt and resolve to never again put yourself out there. Or, you can be wounded and hurt and then say: "Well, shit. I tried. Let's try again."

I had three weeks away from my manuscript, in which I mainly seethed, over-analysed and then, finally, reconsidered. I've now returned to it, determined that those rejections are going to make it a better book.

This process wasn't as painful as it sounds, because I realised something. As much as I would one day love to walk into a bookshop and see my manuscript proudly sitting there in book form, a childhood dream made flesh, writing this book was never about that. It was about escaping to somewhere I felt safe, about doing something that made me feel good, about putting in the effort just to prove to myself what I could do.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, rejection doesn't invalidate your effort. It challenges it, changes it, even - but in the end, it can only make you better.