Turning negative comments into positive action…

Over the years I’ve had all sorts of writing advice and rejections from people in various areas of publishing, some positive, some negative, but ultimately all of it helpful. The positive is good because it keeps you going, gives you an idea of where your work is strong, and reminds you that you’re in the right job. The negative could set you back if you let it, but I never have. If anything, it’s the negative words that have pushed me harder, compelled me to prove them wrong, so now, I’m grateful for it. If you’re a writer, you’ve probably had the same? How did you deal with it? What did you do with it?

Here are some of the negative comments/rejections I’ve had and how I turned them around.

If you don’t know language, don’t write.

This was part of an early rejection of How to be Brave, from an agent. It was in part, I think, because I had pitched what sounded an impossible sell – a book that was both historical and contemporary, that was part biography and part fiction, and that had elements of magic realism in there. This was the one rejection that really stung and therefore propelled me to fight even harder. Who the hell tells a writer not to write? It’s like telling an egg not to be an egg. Anyway, I thought, I know language, and I will write. End of that story.

Not quite right.

This was a really common reason for me being rejected in the early days. I mean, when you actually analyse the statement, it’s bordering on suggesting that I need a long, restful stay somewhere, but I get it, I do. I’ve never been quite right. It was what kept me from getting a book deal for so long. I don’t fit easily into a box. I’m not one thing or another. I’m too genre fluid. But, I made that my thing. I was determined to stay original but keep going.

Not Jodi Picoult.

Love her to bits, but wasn’t trying to be, and this made me continue not to try and be.

Not One Thing Or Another.

See above answer.

If you write a memoir, you might never write anything again, and what if it flops?

This is an interesting one. I can sort of see the reasoning, that maybe if an author pens their true story, they’ll be spent, so to speak, but to say this to a writer doesn’t serve any helpful purpose. What are they supposed to do with this? Not write the memoir? Write it and then be riddled with anxiety that that’s it, career over?

The thing about my memoir is that my intentions were very different to those I had with my fiction. I initially didn’t write it to be published. I wrote it as a release, as therapy, for me. Then I realised it might speak to other women going through the issues I had and got an agent and eventually found a publisher.

The way I turned this negative comment on its head was that after I’d finished it – admittedly terrified that my creativity would have dried up – I had one of my greatest ideas for a novel. It was during the last lockdown and I imagined a world where fiction had been banned. I’d never written dystopian before so was about to set off on my biggest challenge. My fear of failure had never been so intense and this ended up being my friend and guide. It made me extra super self-critical, and therefore I pushed myself like I never had before. Had I not done that, I might not have ended up with the book I did.

Which leads us neatly onto…

No publisher will be interested in a book where fiction is banned.

Again, I sort of understand the reasoning behind this one too. Publishers deal in books. Would a publisher even want to think about such a horrible idea? I’d already written End of Story at this stage and so it was hard to hear this. But, once again, it only prepared me for a possible fight. Ironically, that never came. It was only about a month from submission to signing a deal with Hodder for this novel, but in hindsight, this advice could have prepared me for the many usual knockbacks that come, ones I’d had thousands of times in the past.

Anyway, enough of me. You get the drift here … use knockbacks for push forwards. The very thing you’re being criticised for is what makes you you. Never lose that. Your originality is all you have. And one day, the right publisher(s) will hopefully come along…