publish

On Writing & Rejection

Everyday

In 2016, I wrote a children’s book. Yes, it took me a year to write two Microsoft Word pages of rhyming children’s literature. What can I say? Writing is HARD.

Recently, I was encouraged to try to get it published. While I’ve published several industry articles and some poetry, I have never completed a manuscript and shopped it around. This was new territory for me. I painstakingly researched tips for writing query letters, made a color-coded Excel spreadsheet of literary agents who were most likely to consider my book, obsessed over the first draft of my query letter, and, finally, sent my baby out into the great unknown, possibly never to be heard from again. In fact, very probably.

You see, literary agents no longer send rejection letters. The ease of online submission means more people can send just about anything and literary agents end up with thousands of entries they have to dig through looking for something worthy enough to represent. There is simply no time for rejection emails. Instead, they post a time frame on their website and if you don’t hear back within that window, they aren’t interested.

Harsh? I don’t think so. There simply isn’t enough time to write every desperate author a rejection letter. And there could be so many reasons for rejecting a manuscript. Perhaps it sucks. Or it doesn’t have a market. Or it’s been done before. Or that agent already is representing three other young adult fantasy authors. (Note: I am not writing young adult fantasy.) At the end of the day, the agent just might not like it…

All that being said, this week marked the end of the time window for three of the literary agents I submitted to. It’s official. I’ve been rejected. Or rather, my work has been. Part of me thinks this is a great experience to have. Every writer should experience rejection. It’s part of the whole struggling-writer persona, right? I wouldn’t want this to be too easy – it could mess up my street cred.

But part of me is sad. And a bigger part of me wants to know why. Why was I rejected? Is the subject matter too niché? Is rhyming passé? Was the writing bad? Did they read the manuscript or did they stop at my query letter and move on?

The bad news is that I will never know. The good news is that I will never know and I can move on. And keep on trying.

Childhood Dreams Come True

Advertising, Everyday

When I was younger, I had a dream of writing greeting cards for a living. Although that dream has since faded, it doesn’t make having a greeting card I wrote actually published any less awesome. That’s right. I wrote a greeting card and it’s getting published!

A year ago my friend and work partner, Alan, and I entered a contest on Threadless, a crowd-sourced t-shirt design website, to make a greeting card. Our birthday card design was selected to be part of their collection and will be exclusively sold at Target starting June 16th. Yes, that Target.

This is what it looks like:

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Some of you might cry, “Heretic! Haley doesn’t drink! Why is this card about drinking?” And that is true, I do not partake in the drinking of alcoholic beverages and am a complete teetotaler. I wrote this card on a whim and never thought it would actually make its way into the aisles of a store – or the hands of a person. That being said, I’m not against alcohol. I just don’t support drinking in excess. Alcoholism runs in my family and after 3 years of being an RA I know far too well the negative side of drinking. That being said, moderation people. Moderation.

So if you’re too lazy to make your own card and wanna get your bud one that is clever and quick to the point, hop over to Target and buy one of mine. Or buy fifty. Because I get to split 20% of the profits with Alan and we wanna roll around in wads of greeting card cash.