When you get a rejection ...

... make sure you have a good friend and chocolate cake nearby!

Today I had something exciting in the post, or so I thought. There was a slip from the post on the door mat, telling me I had to pick up a letter and pay for it as the sender had not put on enough postage. Immediately I thought of my friend Sara in Sweden, who sometimes sends me books or just ultra thick letters. I was quite looking forward to picking it up, was even happy to pay the £1.70.

But when I got to the post place and was handed the letter I recognised my own handwriting. A self-addressed envelope I had included with a submission. First I thought it had to do with a poetry submission I'd just done for fun and didn't care that much about, then it dawned on me the letter was from a publisher I had contacted directly and really wanted to get published by.

This is is:

"Many thanks for submitting REPLACING ANGEL for our consideration. I’m sorry to report we will be passing on this title. I noted with interest your previous publishing experience in Sweden – I think your English prose is not quite strong enough yet, however I think that will come with time. My advice would be to keep on practicing writing in English and try to really make the prose come alive on the page. Do keep us in mind for your next novel in English."

I thought about going straight to the nearest pub that happened to be the Station by Hove Station and sit there all day and drink and tell commuters and other random people about my tragedy. Luckily I'd already arranged to have lunch at my friend Saskia's place. (Thank you for saving me!!!) She said all the right things and treated me to a slice of chocolate cake and I felt a little bit better.

The afternoon was spent in some kind of daze. And now it's evening and I've coloured my hair, as I usually do when I want to feel better. I also looked at another rejection letter from an agent:

"I thought that there was much to admire here, in particular your prose style, but I’m afraid that I did not quite feel that all-important connection with your work that I know is vital in this industry, but please do not give up. There are as many opinions out there as there are agents, and a full list of them can be found at www.bloomsbury.com/writersarea/AgentsUK.asp.
With best wishes and good luck in your future endeavours"

So once again it goes to show that decisions in the publishing business are quite subjective ... I had my manuscript proof-read by a professional editor, so if someone thinks that my prose is not strong enough it has nothing to do with being Swedish I don't think ... Especially as the agent above said that he admired my prose style.

Yet the letter I received today really, really hurt. It was a massive decision to write in English when I already had success in Sweden, and now I can't help thinking "what if". I followed my heart instead of my head ...

But no, I won't despair. Somewhere out there I know there's an agent who'll like both my story and my style of prose. Maybe I'll have an acception letter tomorrow. Who knows?

A Different View

No, I'm not going to talk about POINT OF VIEW in writing. I'm going to write about that sometimes writers need a different view so they can relax and re-energise.

I'm the kind of person who find it hard to have a proper holiday. I often think that I should/could be doing something like writing a poem or at least reading a short story and analyse it.

This weekend I decided to take a mini-break. I went very far. I went to Chichester, 45 min down the road on the train. I spent the Saturday checking out Pallant Art Gallery, St Martin's Tea Room, The Cathedral and Wests bar. I stayed in an unexciting, but clean room at the summer empty university campus.

After a deluxe breakfast on Sunday I took off for my main goal: West Wittering Beach. Beautiful. But windy and overcast. The sun didn't show its face until I came to the bus stop, so I had a meal and a pint in the gardens of the Old House at Home pub before heading back to Brighton&Hove.

I don't know what I was hoping to find, but when I came home I felt much calmer than I have in long time. As if I was living more in the elusive "now". I did a bit of journal writing, wrote a long letter to a friend in Sweden and read Amanda Smyth's Black Rock (A fantastic book that I came across last Sunday at Ace Stories at Hotel Pelirocco where Amanda read from her coming-of-age novel set in Tobago & Trinidad.)

But apart from the above activities I didn't force myself to do anything creative and today, Monday, my day has felt less rigid and more organic. I've done some writing, and thinking and analytic reading, but I've enjoyed it very much. Especially as I was lying on the beach burning my bum cheeks at the same time! (West Wittering Beach might be more sandy, but the beach in Hove is pretty good too and I had a swim without having to amputate my toes after.)

Good News: My story "I'm from further North than you" (based on a song by the band the Wedding Present) was chosen as one of the stories to be read at the Edge of the Sea Festival (where Short Fuse stories will appear) at Concorde2 in August! (Thank you very much Brian M, Tim P & James B for feedback!)

A Season For Short Stories

There's a season for eveything. A season for Dr Martens and a season for Birkenstocks. A season for novels. A season for short stories.

The weather has made me change my working habits. I find it impossible to work inside on my laptop when the sun is shining, and taking the laptop out is not a good option as the light is not good for the screen and the battery runs out quite quickly. So this is my new method.

1. The evenings are used for brainstorming and writing up rough first draft of short stories that I print.
2. In the morning I read through the print out over breakfast in the garden and make notes.
3. I carry on in the garden or move to the beach where I go through the story more thoroughly, adding and taking away things. Writing new paragraphs in my note book, answering questions about plot and character etc.
4. Sun fun sun fun. (unfortunately quite often interrupted by my day job)
5. When the sun goes down I type up my changes and print it again.
6. When the sun goes up I do another read through, aloud this time in the garden after breakfast. (Not being half as embarrassing as my neighbour on the other side of the fence who talks to her dog!)
7. Using up the battery power and abusing my laptop screen with sunshine I do some final editing in the garden and then I send it off to someone for feedback or if I feel super confident I send it off to a competition or a magazine. If I decide to go for feedback I'll repeat some of the above points ...

I can already feel that I'm becoming a better novelist by writing short stories. If I worked as hard on every chapter as I do on every short story I'd be a bestseller :). Short stories take so much concentration and focus. You can't get away with any waffling! I've decided to dedicate a year (started in late February) to the art of the short story before I start another novel.