Laurie R. King

Lee Goldberg has some interesting things to say (Oct 19) about rejection’e2’80’94or rather, passes on some interesting takes on his book from jaundiced editorial eyes. Nearly twenty letters turning him down, and the book goes on, when finally published, to great reviews.

As I read through the above paragraph, an intriguing thing pops out at me: His BOOK goes on to do well, but HE is the one who got turned down.

Yes, rejection is personal. Anyway, it feels that way, especially when it happens time and again, and when it’e2’80’99s your baby who is being rejected. A soccer mom whose kid fails to make the cut at least doesn’e2’80’99t have her salary slashed as a result. A writer whose much-loved project knocks on door after door, hoping for warmth and welcome but finding only a reintroduction to the street, feels that very real street outside, looming.

There ain’e2’80’99t no guarantees in the writing business. It’e2’80’99s scary even to mention the possibility, as if failure is a demon summoned by voicing his name, but it’e2’80’99s very true, it’e2’80’99s waiting just outside. I’e2’80’99ve got sixteen books out there, sold a couple million copies, had titles on the New York Times list, and still, every day I feel the cold draft at the bottom of the door. My accountant talks about SEP accounts, and I think, well, that may be necessary. My husband asks if we’e2’80’99re going to have the money for some project or another, and I have to tell him I don’e2’80’99t know.

You’e2’80’99d think I would be the last person able to function with that degree of uncertainty in her life. I’e2’80’99m a fairly structured person; I like things more or less tidy; it annoys me when people are late, and annoys me enormously when I am late. How can I blithely sail into the end of the year not knowing how many zeros will be on my income return the following?

In part, I think, it helps to sneak into the whole writing-as-income thing backwards. When I started, my husband was earning well, and my income was supplement’e2’80’94for example, my advance from Sweden bought central heating, so we only had to use the wood stove when we wanted to. (It was a Scandinavian wood stove, too: I liked the balance of events.) By the time he retired and I was earning with some regularity, it was too late to remember that my earning was at the whims of fortune.

So how do you keep on, feeling that cold breeze moving around your ankles?

You keep on the same way you keep on with whatever book you’e2’80’99re writing: one word at a time.

It helps a lot to be an efficient compartmentalizer, which I am. I focus on what’e2’80’99s at hand, put aside the less pressing and those things I can’e2’80’99t do anything about yet, and try to sweat about only those things I can change. I may not feel I can do anything about the quality of my first draft, but I can certainly move on with the quantity, so I keep writing. I can’e2’80’99t do anything about the state of the publishing market or the tastes of the reading public, but I can keep writing, so I do. I can’e2’80’99t do anything about the overall plot or character development on the manuscript that’e2’80’99s sitting on my desk at the moment, because my editor would kill me and the mortgage company would repossess if I said I needed another six months on it, but I can do something about the copy editor’e2’80’99s wrong corrections and the occasional clumsy phrase that catches my eye, so I do.

I suppose it’e2’80’99s something like the Wright Brothers must have felt. Long, painstaking, mistake-strewn months when you can’e2’80’99t even see the body of what you’e2’80’99re building; then the slow, exciting coming together of wings and wheels, props and flaps; and finally the moment when it’e2’80’99s all together, when you climb in, pull down your goggles, and mail it off to New York.

It’e2’80’99s an exhilarating fifteen-second ride.

And then you pull up your laptop and get started on the next one.