Why writers need rejection (and how it could get you published)

If you’re anything like me, you won’t be a stranger to this word. In fact, if you don’t know it intimately then you’re doing something wrong and are probably floating through life without actually living.

Rejection and I have actually become quite close over the years. Not best friends, certainly, but we know each other well enough to share a beer or two, having grown up together from those days where I was your average teenager with a spectacularly bad dating record, to that time I finally got a date with a real-life girl only to be dumped at the end because the cinema playing Four Weddings & a Funeral happened to be full and I took her to see Beverly Hills Cop III instead.

Could have been worse...

Thankfully these days the turn-downs are slightly more impressive. In the past couple of weeks alone I’ve taken some pretty high-level hits from everyone, including potential employers, a potential literary agent, a couple of well-regarded fanzines, and even a powerhouse publisher.

And while the rejections keep on coming, I actually don’t mind. In fact, I’ve learned to love them. Because they are ABSOLUTELY necessary.

In the shadow of the Dark Peak...

So. Blogs.

I've been toying with the idea for a while. Watching others work their literary magic, wondering if I could, or should, do the same. Life suggested that 'no, I couldn't' and threw a whole heap of other crap at me for a couple of years.

The Peak District: this writer's new base. (NOTE: Not crap.)

Not the kids of course, although they have their moments. But real must-be-karma-for-putting-all-my-protagonists-through-hell type insanity that you could only make up if you were a writer. Which I guess makes me the protagonist of this story. It's an action-packed one too, involving love, loss, ghosts, writing, property developing, property undeveloping, and a move halfway around the world from steamy Australian su-bleurgh-bia to the wintry magic of northern England.

Also giant robots, although they are entirely fictional.

Anyway, I'll share the breadcrumbs of these tales along the way. In the meantime consider this post zero. It only gets better from here.*

(*I make no promises)