Failure
Two-and-a-half years. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve sold a short story*. Thirty damn months since one of my new tales has found a market. In the first five years of my writing career, I sold an average of five a year. Then the publishing train fell off a cliff: seventy straight rejections since the last sale.
Forever. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve sold a novel. I’ve had two manuscripts go through two different agents. The first novel probably garnered a score of rejections. The second is still doing the rounds (fingers crossed), via my excellent rep, John Jarrold. These two novels were the third and fourth that I’ve written. The first two never saw the light of day, and justifiably so.
Add these first two paragraphs together and we’re talking a hundred rejections straight, without respite.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about failure, it’s this: you don’t realise how much you can take until you really, really try. I remember a time when the idea of writing a complete novel seemed a herculean task, and the subsequent notion it wouldn’t sell unfathomable. Now I know the truth: writing a novel is a herculean task and the chances of selling it unlikely. I’ve become quite good at failure, over the years: shrugging it off, and keeping moving on.
(Click the PDF icon, upper right, if you prefer reading a black-on-white script)
But what’s the more specific lesson here, from this long period of failure? What have I been doing wrong?
Fucked if I know. But let me take an educated guess.
While it is good to press yourself as a writer, I think taking on technical challenges purely for their own sake is indulgent. Tackling a complex theme is different – my works do not lack on this measure. But I do think that every time I’ve tried to be technically clever ‘hey I’m going to write second person-future tense’ – or some bullshit like that – it doesn’t work. Which is to say: if your heart isn’t in the story, it’s probably not a good story.
I’ve also wondered if the wave of rejections is, in part, because I’ve been back in Australia for three years now, and my creativity was a lot more pronounced in Vietnam. Travel, living in a different city and culture, these are fertile grounds for the imagination. Not to say my own country is dull – far from it. But rather, that experiencing the new, and being out of your comfort zone, is self-evidently good for creativity (I suspect the pandemic will be the genesis of some powerful storytelling).
I think these two points are part of the answer, but not all of it. The third factor is this: luck. I’ve spoken about this before, but in short, success in writing is often about getting a story or novel in the hands of the right editor at the right time. Now, it has to be a good story – you have to be both lucky and good in this business – but good timing doesn’t hurt at all.
Here is what I argued previously:
[H]ow much is luck a factor in writing? We know, sometimes, that quality of prose has nothing to do with sales (Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey) (though I’d argue both of those authors had a compelling story to tell, even if I personally don’t find either very interesting). We know the story of novels that never nearly were: Stephen King’s wife pulled his Carrie manuscript out of the trash can and made him submit it – the novel ended up getting him an advance of 400 grand. Dune was rejected by more than twenty publishers, and only ended up being bought by Chilton Books, which until that point was known for publishing car repair manuals. We know JK Rowling’s story: single mother, on welfare, looking at the brink of homelessness. After multiple rejections, she was given a lifeline by Bloomsbury.
Part of me thinks these writers would always have been big. They all have singular gifts as storytellers: Stephen King as described his will to write as a kind of ‘sickness’ – something he could simply not stop doing, a daily obsession. The only solace Rowling found in her otherwise difficult life was in writing.
Yet, another part of me wonders: at what point would King have given up, and instead focussed on earning enough money for his family? At the time he sold Carrie, he couldn’t afford medication for his sick child. At what point would Rowling have given up on Harry Potter? What if King and Rowling had a statistically bad run?
These are legitimate questions to ask. And if we can still ask questions about the most successful authors, what does it mean for schlubs like me?
And also:
Let’s say your novel is extremely good. Eminently publishable. Well, there’s a lot of them. Millions of unpublished manuscripts go to the major houses, the minor houses, small publishers every single year. It’s a buyer’s market. Very good manuscripts will be passed over all the time.
…
Someone in my position, with fifteen short story sales and no published novel [edit: since writing this article I have published a short story collection]. I’m still pretty close to the bottom of the pile. To get a book deal as a new writer, you must, in my opinion, be better than a lot of the published authors out there.
This is all fine, but does it explain not making a sale in 30 months? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe this is the fourth lesson of this training article: embrace uncertainty. Most careers will give you a certain measure of predictability: if nothing else, you will continue to get paid, whether you are doing a good job or bad. I currently work in the community sector on disability programs; I used to work in the university sector, and in the public service. At no time did I get to the end of a month and be told by a supervisor: look sorry mate, your work isn’t up to scratch, so I’m going to withhold your pay.
Now, this point is kinda spurious, insofar as writers earn so little. Okay. But part of this gig is typing into the void. Sitting at this fucking table, day after day, writing words that may never be published. Developing stories, building characters, creating worlds that will only ever exist in my own imagination. It’s dispiriting sometimes, of course. But that’s all also the point: if you are aware of the nigh-impossibility of finding an audience for your work – to say nothing of earning enough to make a basic living – and still continue to write, then maybe you are meant to be a writer.
In general I hate old protestant work-ethic chants like: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” But fuck man, in this business, that certainly feels true. All this hard work builds good stories. Every story sold adds incrementally to the argument for a publisher or editor taking a risk on me, on you. Every positive review, every award nomination, every award, accretes over time.
As Steve Martin said: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
And this, at some point, leads to:
Success
This is where my short story collection comes into the picture. And this is where my sorry tale of these last three abject years needs to be qualified. My collection, Neon Leviathan, includes two new stories – a novella and a short – in addition to ten that were previous published. These dozen stories were, therefore, accepted by my excellent publisher, Grimdark. Accepted. A rare word, in this business. The reviews for the collection are overwhelmingly positive, both from general readers on Goodreads, and from successful authors such as Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time), and Richard Morgan (Altered Carbon).
All the hard work, both in the writing of the stories (which took seven years) and the pulling the collection together (which took two years), has paid off. This is despite the pandemic. Despite the fact I could never officially ‘launch’ the book, it has been selling well (caveat: well for a short story collection from a small publisher – these are never best-sellers). Works like this depend on launches – we had three planned: two here in Australia and one in New Zealand – and mine were all cancelled. So it is fair to say I’m pleased with how it is has gone.
What is the lesson of this moderate success? Well, again, persistence. Maybe you don’t want to hear it, and I don’t want to keep saying it, but honestly, if there’s a quality alongside work-ethic and talent, then it is persistence (the fourth is: contacts in the industry, and the fifth is: geographical proximity to cultural centres like New York and London – but these last two deserve a separate post).
Picking yourself up off the floor, and moving forward, time and again. In the words of Churchill: “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” Or, as Octavia Butler put it: “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”
Finally, I must mention something cool that happened, just in the last couple of days, as I was finishing this article. A few weeks back I wrote to Richard Morgan to thank him for giving me a great blurb for my book. I said I was a fan and had read everything of his, except his most recent novel, Thin Air. He answered: well in that case, I better send you a copy. This arrived today (see picture, right). A hardback version, plus a personal note from Richard. Legend. I’ll take this as a success, as well.
That’s all I got. Nothing particularly inspired: work hard, expect the worst. Enjoy your successes when they come.
