I recently came across a website that compelled me to
write about something close to the heart: giving up on dreams.
What I read was a despairing post from a fellow
struggling writer who had been posting his rejected responses from literary agents on
his blog over the last year and a half. The revelations of his struggles became
infrequent as more time passed, until finally his last post was a couple of
thrown together words symbolising a waving white flag.
His spirit was broken. His hopes had evaporated with
every rejection he had received and he was on the brink of giving up
completely. Will he? That's up to him to decide but this is the path for many would-be-authors, would-be-sports stars,
would-be-musicians or for anyone who dares to possess a dream. So what do you do when that goal
you set yourself becomes a seemingly unattainable target?
You regroup and try again.
It’s easier to say than do, but I’ve been there at
that point where you’re on the brink of giving up and you have to do some soul
searching and find something within to see if that burning desire still exists.
If it is, you have to reignite that fire to spur you on to try again.
Be willing to make sacrifices. If you really want it,
stop listening to those around you who say you can’t, distracting yourself with
time-sinks and dedicate yourself to turning disappointment and rejection into a
challenge. I can’t speak from experience of achieving success, but I can of
giving it your absolute all and turning seemingly obstacles into stepping
stones as you try and scale the mountain you’ve targeted.
I’ve wanted to become an author since I was a kid. I
spent my childhood writing short stories. As I grew older, I attempted my first
novel. Before I managed to complete it, the laptop I was working on was hit by
a bolt of lightning (true story) and I hadn’t learned at that point the value
of backing up your files. Doh! Rather than be discouraged, I took it as a
challenge to try again and it was almost a lesson from life that has shaped me
ever since.
So I wrote another and finally completed it as I
turned twenty. I submitted it to various agencies via post as e-mail
submissions weren’t an option back then, and just like in Harry Potter, floods
of letters came my way except these weren’t invitations to magical places but
rejections of cold hard reality. I wasn’t ready yet. The lightning bolt’s
lesson gave me the experience to try again and I responded by writing another
book, and that has been my cycle for the past decade with eight different books
of various lengths to my name. Each one spurred on by a belief that the next
one will be ‘the one’ and I'll know it when I write it.
My current manuscript I’m championing is 96,000 words
long and I believe it’s ‘the one’. I’d say I’ve written closer to 500,000 words
in total on that book alone. The initial creation was over 100,000 words in
length, which had its own sizeable rewrites and edits. I sent it out to agents,
I got rejected. I decided to try something new and I hired a professional editor and based on her notes, I rewrote
it again, set up a publishing brand, hired book cover designers and self-published it on Amazon for three months to gain external feedback that
made me do another rewrite. Ready to try again, I resent it out and received
some reward: positive feedback along with a request from an agent for a rewrite
followed quickly by a referral to an interested editor at a publishing house.
It’s like waiting for a bus after years of shivering in the rain at the open roofed bus stop.
I was faced with a choice: the easy option of
submitting the original version directly to the editor, or the choice offered
by the agent that presented more hard work. I decided to do the rewrite, which eventually became a 60,000 word modification in total, because I believed putting in the work to make
the stronger story would go a longer way to making my dreams come true and set
a stronger foundation to long-term success. During this process, two other
agents also reached out to me and after explaining the situation, one asked to
be kept updated and the other invited me to resubmit the rewritten version once
completed.
That’s where I am currently. I’m still agentless and unpublished,
and many months have passed with me waiting on a decision that’s not mine to
make. It’s been hard. That’s a lot of time for self-doubt to spread but I’ve
turned that growing negativity into positivity by using that time to rewrite
three of my older books that might have potential, just in case, and plan out in detail the rest of the
series and think of future book projects I’d like to write. Always keep going
because the only guarantee in life is you won’t achieve anything if you don’t
try.
To any would-be-authors out there, if you’re convinced
that the particular story you possess is ‘the one’, then don’t give up on it.
Work on it. Literary agents aren’t blind, they’re readers just like us who in
addition to searching for a compelling story are looking to turn their 15% into
a liveable income. If they’re saying no, there’s a reason so find that reason
and figure out how to turn no into yes. If you believe they’re right and the
story isn’t salvageable, use the experience and write another book.
The secret to success is not giving up, no matter what
the dream, you have to try and find a way. Rather than give up, give everything
you’ve got and then give that little bit more.
You’ll earn what you want in life when life decides
you deserve it and that’s when you’ll get it. So keep going and don’t give up
on your dreams as they are what define us.
