On Notes that Hurt

If you’ve been writing for a long time, you’ve probably had your fair share of the following experience. If you’re a new or aspiring writer, this might be a scenario you’ve never considered. It happens a lot. Even when you’re certain you have a great product, you’re still going to get rejected… the majority of the time. There’s nothing wrong with that - a great product needs to find the hands of the right people. The wrong person rejecting it means you’re still looking for that needle in a haystack. That’s the business of writing, which we can dive more into another time. What I want to discuss is what happens when a friend, a real friend who always has your back, rejects you due to your work. 

New Novel, New Problems

For this story, you need some context. My friend (let’s call him Melvin) has been in my life for decades. Since the early days of high school, in fact. We’ve been in each other’s lives during all the dark days, from heartbreaks to financial struggles to chaos to injuries. Yet throughout it all, we’ve remained friends that regularly hang out. 

It has never been without friction. Melvin and I are very different people, and we get under each other’s skin easily. I don’t want to paint some rosie picture of us skipping through the tulips together on a fine summer’s day. We don’t have a lot in common, and what we do have in common, we tend to tackle very differently. 

I rarely talked to Melvin about my writing. I shared updates when we’d hang out, but over time they seemed to be met with a polite indifference. This was fine with me. Not everyone in my circle is going to care about my work, especially while it’s a work in progress. Melvin loves story, but he’s not a reader- he’s visual- so no big deal. 

One day, Melvin approached me and told me he’s upset because we have this long, rich friendship yet he had to learn that I was publishing a novel from a mutual friend of ours.

This annoyed me, I had been writing this book for a long time. He knew about it. He just didn’t ask about its progress, ever, or what it was about, or what I hoped to do with it once it was finished. He knew, it just was not a point of interest for him. 

By the way, that book he’s referring to is The Five Cursed Kingdoms: The Stone of Despair, and now that it is published, I’d be really honoured if you checked it out! Okay, shameless plug over, onto the juicy bits. 

I explained to Melvin that our mutual friend knew before he did because that mutual friend is also a writer. We talk about writing. Melvin was still hurt, and I can appreciate that. Nobody likes to learn big news about a friend from someone else. Anyway, we talked it out, and moved forward. 

It’s important to this story to mention that while Melvin read an early (early!) draft of my novel,  he didn’t finish the book. That while he gave feedback on the beginning, he never followed up on the changes. His feedback was not positive, but was useful and mirrored other feedback I had gotten, so edits were implemented before the book’s publication. 

Writers, this is important, and I don’t want to gloss over it. Do not blindly take all notes. Consider the source, and their level of knowledge on the subject. Since Melvin’s not in my target audience, isn’t an avid reader, and has shown little interest in my writing, I took his notes with a grain of salt. When I got similar notes from other friends and loved ones, I knew we needed to make changes.  You need to take all notes, but you don’t always need to implement them!

Anyway, the book gets published, and there’s congratulations all around. Melvin and I carry on and hang out, business as usual. Melvin’s goal this year was to strengthen our friendship, and he’d asked at one point if my publishing company, HoneySpot Productions, needed anything. At the time, we had enough cooks in the kitchen for a fledgling company. He told me the offer stands. 

Months and months go by. Last week, I’m hanging out with Melvin, and he’s offering to potentially help my business one day using some newfound skills he’s building, and a thought comes to mind. Writers, marketing a book, especially a new book by a debut author, is a crazy mountain to climb. It’s very possible, but it requires determination! You can do it. I’m sitting here, trying to figure out how to show people I’ve got something really awesome on my hands, and they can read it, and I turn to Melvin, and I ask him to do something for me. 

Melvin is part of a very vibrant online community that I am not a part of. There are certainly fans of fantasy books as part of this group. I’m betting more than a few. So, I asked him to share the book with his community. 

And he said no. 

More specifically, he said: “I’d rather recommend a better book you’ve written. Maybe the next one.” 

That’s a (not-so-subtle) way of saying he didn’t like my work. My work that he never finished, nor looked at a more recent edition. One of my longest friends just rejected me on the merit of a product that I spent my life learning to craft. 

I’ve had kicks in the nards that hurt less than that. Thanks, Melvin. 

So Much for that Friendship… Right? 

Here’s the thing. Not everyone is going to like your work, and that’s perfectly okay. If the tables were turned, and Melvin wanted me to put his name forward for an opportunity, and I had reservations, I might have rejected him. This time, he didn’t put me forward. 

As a writer, this is going to happen to you. It’s another rejection, one a lot closer to home, and it hurts. If it has happened to you, I’m sorry for your pain. If it hasn’t, I hope it never does.

I’m still friends with Melvin. I know he’s got some skills at analyzing issues in literature, so there’s a chance he’ll be someone I ask to give notes again in the future. Probably not. His response lacked a lot of grace and awareness. He seemed to think his answer successfully brushed past an awkward situation, but for me, it landed like a turd in a swimming pool. 

I don’t want to dwell on Melvin’s lack of helpfulness, or the delivery in his rejection, or the many reasons why or why not he did the right thing. The thing here is now that I’m in pain, what do I do with it? 

I mean, I obviously wrote about it in my blog, but that came after the fact. 

An Aspiring Writer’s Guide to Rejection: Lick Your Wounds

When a notes session hurts me, I need to sort out those emotions. Nobody likes to hear that their work is not perfect, and some notes hit harder than others, especially if there’s lots going on in life. It usually takes me some time after hearing a note before my brain will inform the rest of me that the note bothered me. It’s lingering. It’s painful. 

This doesn’t mean the notes were bad, or the rejection was unfounded or undeserved. I can walk away from an amazing notes session and be amped to write the next draft, and simultaneously bummed because I still have a long way to go. 

When you get notes that hurt, process them. Process the emotion. Give it voice, acknowledge and feel it, and be bummed about it. You need to let your emotions do their thing. You’ve seen Inside Out, and if you haven’t, get out of here and watch it. 

A big part of painful notes is pride. It’s embarrassment or shame. It’s aggravating. At least for me, it is. I try to sort all of those emotions out, and just accept that I feel them. 

We process emotions best when we talk about them. You don’t want to break into juicy gossip and shitmongering here, but for me, I needed to talk about it. I told my wife what happened, then turned to a long-time writing partner of mine, and he said it best: that sucks. 

It does suck. When a friend or family member lets you down, it sucks big time. That’s okay. Things can suck sometimes. We talk about how we’re feeling, and we move on. 

Finally, move forward. 

Grieve, Learn, and Live Again

I’m not going to stop hanging out with Melvin. I am undecided if this is a topic worth bringing up to him, but that’s a future problem. I will think twice, or even three times, before I share my work with him the next time. That will, inevitably, upset him, for the same reasons he was upset I didn’t tell him about the book the first time. The thing is that he’s unlikely to champion the work if there are flaws, rather than trust me to find, and address the flaws. This means he’s someone who makes a judgment on a work-in-progress, and that judgment is his final answer. That’s a terrible person to ask for notes. It serves me best to let him read it post-publication.  

I have a lot of friends who are able to say, “This isn’t my thing, but I gave it a go, and here’s what I think,” then shared it anyway. I have many friends who happily avoid reading everything I put out. They are unabashedly unconcerned with my work. I also have a lot of friends who give me insightful notes, even ones that are devastating, in a graceful way. 

Melvin might have great insight, but gaining that insight is no longer worth the risk of him rejecting the work. It’s also a topic that is tenuous at best, and could cause more strife in a long, oftentimes challenging friendship. 

There is a lot I need to do, however. Melvin isn’t one of my fans yet when it comes to my writing. Maybe I’ll win him over, but that’s not my goal. There’s billions of people in this world, and many of them will love what I do. I need to find those people, and delight them with my work. 

I need to write the next book, so when they’re jonesing for more of The Five Cursed Kingdoms, I can give them something awesome to digest. I need to write other books as well, to show the world that my imagination has many great things hidden within, and many great lessons to hopefully impart. I need to hunker down, remind myself what the goal is, and move on. 

This is but one of the many ways to get rejected as a writer. Take it in stride, but do take it in. Process it. Learn from it. Grieve it. And get back to the table. There’s stories to tell, and only you can tell them.