The R Word

There is something nobody has talked about. The big R. Just a few days ago a gym friend of mine who knew me before my books deals asked me how I handled all the rejection. The easiest answer was that I just kept going.


But after I talked to her, I started to think about it. How did I keep on going despite boxes of rejections - everything from poorly reproduced copies of letters, to personal letters, to the we liked it, but not enough sort of letters.

The first answer that comes to mind that when I succeeded it was so sweet. The first time I remember feeling that way was in fifth grade. It was a particularly bad year for me. The first teacher left on a maternity leave and after that was followed by one substitute after another. Most of the time the class was bedlam. But in the middle of all that we had an assignment. I don’t even remember what it was just that I made up a story about going to Paris and Tokyo. Most of the information I used for the Paris part came from the cover of Seventeen Magazine - a beautiful shot of a model in front of the Eiffel Tower. My Tokyo trip was based on what I learned on the Mickey Mouse Club. I just remember something about cooking on a teppan grill. My story was a huge success. The teacher, which ever one it was, read it in class. It was my first shining moment in school.

Something similar happened in high school English. I wrote my first mystery story about jewels being smuggled in bird’s feathers. Most of my English papers didn’t please that particular teacher, but she liked the story well enough to read in class. It was my second shining moment in school.

And then in college everything changed when I started to work on the student newspaper. I began writing news stories. Seeing my name in print was pretty cool, but not as cool as when I started writing a weekly column. After all the years of being on the outside looking in, I was suddenly on the inside - all because of my writing.

I dreamed of working on a newspaper when I graduated, but that didn’t happen. It took years and years of writing all kinds of different things. There were lots of disappointments, and some victories. What kept me going was that just like my shining moments in school, the victories were so sweet that I was willing to climb over rocks and hear a million no thank yous to get to the yeses.

I had just about given up on ever selling a book. I was ready to give away the book I had on how to promote your first novel, figuring I would never have use for it. Maybe the Woman’s World stories, the one script I sold, and the assorted newspaper and magazine pieces were going to be it.

Even so I kept sending out the young adult mystery I’d written. Every time I dropped it in the mail, I said to myself that sometime it wouldn’t come back. And then it didn’t. Instead I got a call from a small publisher saying they wanted to publish it. That was just after new year’s in 2006. Blue Schwartz and Nefertiti’s Necklace came out in September of that year.

Meanwhile I had the idea for a crochet mystery. That summer I met my agent at a RWA conference and discussed the idea. She said the magic words. “If you write it, I can sell it.”
Right after Blue Schwartz came out, I wrote the proposal for the crochet mystery series. My agent sent it to Berkley and St. Martins. And within two weeks, both of them wanted it. From no books, I was in a bidding war. Well, not exactly a war. Berkley upped their offer and I went with them.

The first time I saw a copy of Hooked on Murder face out in the Border’s in Chicago, all the no’s to get there fell into the background. It was the sweetest moment of all.

Nobody exactly told me how to handle rejection. My father definitely did let me know it was part of writing. My advice is to concentrate on those sweet moments when you get accepted and maybe to keep some chocolate around to get you through the times when you’re not.