So you wanna be a author? I know there are a few of you out there that do! Don’t lie! LOL
Well, I’ve been writing professionally since I was 19, and let me tell you: Part of being a writer is learning how to deal with rejection. You get it from all sides — editors, agents, reviewers, and readers, but I think the hardest bit of rejection I had to endure was for a novel I wrote about a black nerd. I probably took it so hard because the story was so close to my heart.
It was about a woman named Celeste, a quirky (OK, let's just say awkward) black nerdette who came home one day after getting fired from her job to find her fiancé sexing some other chick. She falls into a deep depression—staying locked in her room and downing donuts and Oreos by the fistful—before her beloved grandfather suggests she head to a small mountain town in South Dakota to rediscover herself. While there she meets a bunch of eccentric townsfolk, has a few hijinks, falls in love with her ruggedly sexy blond neighbor (Think True Blood’s Eric Northman back when he had a beard), and lives happily ever after.
I loved this story! I thought it was chick lit at its finest! I thought it had a recipe for success too because it put a new spin on the old fish-out-of-water/“big city girl comes to small town” tale that the book industry has been eating up for years. It had humor, a black nerd, and interracial romance! Hell yeah! Women are gonna love this one!
So I pitched it to more than a dozen agents and a few publishers. About a third of the responses were good—at first. If you don’t know anything about the submission process, I’ll share the details. It usually starts with a query letter in which you pitch your idea and give some background about yourself, and then the agent can request a partial manuscript. If they like that, they usually ask for a full manuscript. After that, they can offer to represent you.
About a third of the agents and publishers requested partials and a few requested fulls. I just knew this novel was going to get published. But then the responses to my manuscripts started to trickle in and my high hopes plummeted.
Two agents said the novel was fine, but it just wasn’t for them. Two never responded. One said she lost interest after 100 pages and didn’t bother to finish. And a publisher who had asked for a full and sent a note back with suggested changes, said that in the end, “although the story shows promise,” it just wasn’t quite the right fit for their imprint. That’s pretty much the publisher equivalent of the “It’s not you, it’s me,” break up line. And of course, that nicely worded rejection arrived just days before Christmas. Needless to say, life imitated art, and like Celeste I spent the next couple of weeks stuffing my face and crying like I had Sade’s greatest hits on automatic replay.
But feeling sorry for myself got old fast. I made changes to the manuscript, incorporating feedback. I also continued pitching another story. This other novel wasn’t about a black nerd, but about a chick that was definitely misunderstood. The heroine Lauren grew up in a family of gold diggers who operated for three generations under a cobbled-together rule book of gold-digging dos and don’ts. Like a modern-day geisha, Lauren had been trained her whole life on how to seduce rich men, but in the back of her mind she had always questioned whether this was the right thing to do. Finally, a violent night with her boyfriend sends her life on a new course. Lauren changes her ways, becomes a chef, falls in love, and faces many obstacles trying to get to her own happily-ever-after.
When I finished writing, Can't Stand the Heat, I was excited, but wary. I thought it sexy. It had drama, humor, a likeable underdog, and dynamic characters. I could even see the potential for a series. But based on previous rejections to my black nerd love story, I tried to keep my optimism about this book in check. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. So I pitched the gold-digger novel to a few agents and publishers, keeping my expectations low—and the rejections came back so fast it gave me whiplash.
But then... something great happened. An editor at Kensington Publishing, a mid-size house in New York, contacted me and asked if I had written the second novel in the series yet, since I said in my query that the novel had series potential. (Well, yes, ma’am, actually I’ve got it right here!) I sent her the second book in April, a synopsis for the third a month or so later, and by July, I had a 3-book deal offer from Kensington. The first book, Can't Stand the Heat, was just released.
So the moral of the story: Being a writer means dealing with rejection, but it also means not giving up. To those aspiring novelists out there, I offer that advice. And if you need any more advice on how to enter the industry, I’m available. I can’t get you an agent or a book contract, but could offer some guidance on how to get there. You know where to find me! :)
-- Black Girl Nerds contributor, Shelly Ellis
