On Navigating Rejection, Revision, and More
Practical Writing Life Advice from Four Writers
It took nine years for me to sell my first book. I spent the first four years writing and revising until I signed with my agent in 2019. For the next five years, my agent and I worked together to revise and sell the book. Now that we’re nearly a year out from Good People’s expected publication date, I’ve been thinking about the winding (and honestly frustrating) road that led me to this point. Hindsight is 20/20 because it’s hard to look back on this journey and not think, “Man, if I knew then what I know now.”
Most writers feel like this about their writing lives. This week, I’ve asked four Substack writers to look back on their own writing journeys and answer this question: what’s one skill, mindset, or practice you wish you had adopted earlier?
Their advice covers everything from navigating rejection and finding community to experimenting with different writing processes. I’ve gotten so much value out of their sage insights, and I’m so excited to share their advice with you today. As always, you know what to do: take anything that’s useful to you and your writing life and leave everything that’s not behind.
Navigating Rejection with Haili Blassingame
I wish, in my early 20s, I had understood what no from a lit magazine or publishing professional meant. What it means: this specific magazine, this specific house, isn’t interested in publishing your work. It doesn’t mean that work isn’t worthy of being in the world. No outlet or house has that kind of power. Before I get into why understanding the real role of gatekeepers in my writing life was an important revelation, I want to offer a big ass caveat: a no from an editor, agent, whoever, may not mean your project will never see the light of day—but it can absolutely mean that maybe it’s not ready to. This is where discernment enters the chat. Sometimes rejections mean your story, your prose, aren’t hitting. Sometimes they mean nothing. But they never mean stop.
Let’s assume you’re not delusional. That you’re the kind of abiding writer who takes their work as far as it can go and not a round of revision fewer. You’re going to be told no so many times it’ll make you sick. I’m here to tell you that, unless these nos come equipped with concrete feedback that resonate with your creative vision, they don’t matter, they just mean you’re out here in the ring with the rest of us. What matters is that you maintain a feral, rabid belief in your own work. A belief that no no can rattle. Because do you know what the worst writer stories are to me? They’re not the ones where someone took ten years to finish their novel. Or the ones where someone’s first or second novels didn’t sell. They’re the stories about writers who let someone else’s no be the last.
When I was about to go on submission with my novel, I began to think about what the inevitable rejections would mean for me. What would I do if I reached the end of the process and the book didn’t sell? It was a real question I needed to answer, I couldn’t be blindsided by an experience as common as this. Most people advise writers whose projects have “died” on submission to take a beat and then work on their next project. This is sometimes the right choice. Sometimes you’re ready to let the project go. But what I don’t like about this wisdom is that it’s dependent on you not believing in your work completely unless an editor believes in it too. I’d ask, if you’ve truly done the serious work on this book, why isn’t your belief in it enough?
A writer I love, and who you’ve probably heard of by now, Torrey Peters put her early novellas online for free. She knew a traditional publisher wasn’t ready for the kind of trans stories she was telling. She didn’t wait for a yes. She took it out of their mouths. Then publishing came knocking, wanting Detransition, Baby, now a national bestseller. And those early novellas she gave out for free? One appears in her latest story collection Stag Dance.
Sometimes your shit isn’t good, especially when you’re still learning to fly the plane. But when it is good and you know it’s good, hold that knowledge tight. I decided that no matter what happened on submission, that book was going to be out in the world. Nobody was writing what I was writing in it, that made it necessary to me. If I had to tattoo it on my skin and walk around my city naked, I was going to get it out there. I believed in it that much, and that belief made everything else bearable because I didn’t have to wait for an answer; I answered myself.
Hopefully I’ll be able to share how that story ends soon. What I’ll say now is that I hope you get that kind of ending. But in the meantime, free yourself from the false power of other people’s nos. When it comes to art, the kind that outlives us, the only no that matters in the end is yours.
Writing Boldly with Lindsey Trout Hughes
It took me a while to understand that the kind of writing I love isn’t built on performance, but on presence.
Before I was a writer, I was an actor. I practiced listening with my whole body, making big choices, and inhabiting other lives with devotion. I learned to drop into sensation, to trust that if I stayed present and paid close enough attention, something true would reveal itself through me.
During a rehearsal in which I was being especially cerebral, a director gave me a note I still treasure: Keep your heart close to your mouth.
When I started writing seriously, I forgot all that. I tried to be smart. I tried to be good and clever. I over-intellectualized and over-edited. My sentences were polished, but they cost me nothing to write.
Then I remembered how I approached theater-making. Onstage, the goal was never to “perform” but to be changed, to let language and story do something to you, and to let the audience witness and transform alongside you in real time.
My relationship to writing changed when I realized that this was also the work of the sentence. Writing, like acting, asks its practitioners to be fully and fiercely here. Not clever or polished, but present.
Here are three ways to practice presence on the page:
1. Be specific.
Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Writing, at its best, is no different. And specificity is such a wonderful vehicle for truth.
When I want my work to be weirder, more surprising, more alive, I try to lean into the peculiarities of my own humanness: the vivid texture of a memory, the flicker of shame behind a joke, the way the air actually smelled.
2. Befriend friction. Befriend not knowing.
The late American actor Robert Prosky once said that actors must become "lifelong residents in the house of not knowing." I think about this line a lot.
If I'm onstage and know exactly what will happen in a scene, what's the point? I need to listen to my partner, to the instrument of my own body, to be open to surprise. I need to let the experience of living in the work alter me.
Considering the technological moment we're living through, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the most vital thing a writer can do is be willing to sit in the friction of not knowing.
It will only become easier and easier for machines to deliver tidy work with neat landings, packaging revelation that hasn't been lived. But true presence with our writing demands that we let it unfold through uncertainty and time.
By opening to the unknown and letting stories take the time they take, we not only allow something new to emerge, but we allow ourselves to be changed in the process.
3. Make bold choices.
In 2012, I saw the Maly Drama Theater's production of The Three Sisters. At the end of the play, the actress playing Masha buried her face in her lover's coat—his artillery battery had been transferred, and he was leaving. Her sobs were muffled at first, swallowed into his lapel. Then, as her sisters took her by each arm and pulled her forcefully away, Masha's sobs turned to screams, filling the theatre. It split something open. The choice wasn't tidy or elegant, but it was unforgettable.
We can do this on the page, too. Make the choice that costs you something. Play boldly. Write the thing that feels too weird, too much, too risky. Keep your heart close to your mouth.
Finding Community with Auzin
Looking back on my writing life so far, I wish I'd prioritized finding a literary community and started writing to a public audience earlier. These practices in tandem have helped me get comfortable with others reading my work, feel a sense of belonging in the writing world, and become a more confident writer.
In my early teens, I would post snippets of poetry on DeviantArt, and had a very secretive BlogSpot/Tumblr presence, but I don't think I ever really believed that my words were public. The Internet felt smaller back then, and I felt deeply insecure about my writing because it was so personal. Finding a community of peers I could trust would have helped me immensely, even just to get out of my own head.
I started performing spoken-word poetry at Hugo House with a friend when I was eighteen, and that was so affirming, like I had finally found my people. I'd never been part of a friend group that was united by their love for language and writing. It was intoxicating to write something, read it out loud to people, and get feedback all in one night.
After I went to college, I lost touch with my creativity and my friends in the Seattle literary community. I didn't believe in my work, since I saw no desirable career paths that included writing. I didn't write a blog or join any of the writer's groups in my college town. My undergrad years could have been spent working on my craft and learning how to publish, but I didn't publish anything until 2019, two years after I left college.
Now, writing for the public has changed the way I think about my practice. Now that I know I can stick to a regular writing schedule, I'm way more consistent and prolific. I have dozens of publications, writer friends all over the world, and a niche community on Substack. On my Substack newsletter, I write both for myself and for my audience. I choose what to write and when to publish it, but my goal is always to help other writers and creatives with resources, advice, and camaraderie. If that goal changes over time, that's okay; for now, it's the guiding light that shapes my newsletter.
If you’re looking to find community, here are three things to try out:
Take a generative writing class with time for sharing at the end of each session. Challenge yourself to share your work at least three times. Journal about how sharing made you feel before, during, and afterwards. Try to make friends! I recommend checking out the online classes at Hugo House, Clarion West, GrubStreet, and with Yasmine Ameli.
Choose a venue and a cadence for sharing your work publicly. If it's online, you can start a blog, newsletter, or social media profile. If you want to create things physically, try making zines and distributing them at your local DIY collective or art market. You can also attend poetry open mics or active weekly writing circles.
Don't worry about sticking to a theme or cohesive thesis. Just keep writing. Don't think about if it "all makes sense together" or if you have "good branding." Your main goal at the outset should be to write. The writing itself will help you figure out who you are and what you want to say.
Revision with Nina Michiko Tam
Last summer, I attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. Two of the faculty members there independently brought up an idea that deeply resonated with me. In a craft lecture on revision, the lovely Marie-Helene Bertino told us to ask ourselves, “What do I try to get away with?” and then instructed us to not let ourselves get away with it. A few days later, Rebecca Makkai discussed how we approach problems in writing, and how too often we attempt to go under it (ignoring the problem) or try to go over it (seeking a solution that misses the whole point) instead of going through it (acknowledging the problem).
The moment I heard Rebecca and Marie-Helene say all that, my mind immediately jumped to my work-in-progress (and now my forthcoming debut)! Too often, I try to get away with things. In early drafts, that instinct usually attacks when I reach a scene or conversation I don’t know how to write, or a logistical issue I haven’t fully puzzled through. And then, like any other human, I search for a shortcut.
I see this often in the balance of scene versus summary. Sometimes (often) on the first pass, I’ll avoid writing a “hard” conversation or scene by simply summarizing it. Tommy and Joy fought all the time, usually about God, sometimes about everything else, I’ll write, so that I don’t have to tell you about the language they used or the specifics of their disagreement. There’s nothing wrong with summary. But sometimes summary prevents us from really understanding the texture of the scene, the dimensions of the characters. Sometimes summary is me attempting to cheat my way out of the literal hard conversations. Write the damn scene! Write the damn scene and see what happens!
Another example? The cheater’s fade to black. Sometimes, in my meandering first draft, I’ll write pages and pages of the wind-up, all the way until the point in the scene when the actual thing happens. Then, out of unconscious cowardice, I’ll fade the scene to black. Here’s an example: say you’re writing a character who’s about to meet her ex, and she’s so nervous. You’ve got pages and pages of her getting ready, and walking to the coffee shop, and ordering a drink. Then you write: She saw him across the coffee shop, their eyes locked, and she knew everything had changed, again. Fade to black. The next chapter picks up with: Their conversation had revitalized her. That’s terrible writing, but you get my point: you’ve got all this buildup, but then you deprive the reader of seeing the actual event and all its meaning.
Finally, I’m also guilty of the cutting-short. I love to chop off a conversation or a scene a bit too early. I think part of that instinct comes from being afraid of figuring out how it ends. I’m very inspired by Brandon Taylor’s recent posts on scenes, where he writes: “That is where the writing is. That vertiginous feeling that you’re about to lose the thread. That is real writing. But more than anything, stay with your scene. Longer. Force yourself to endure. Do not be elliptical. Write the thing.”
Here are three revision steps to try out:
Identify all the spots where you’re cheating. If you’re me, you had some immediate thoughts pop into your head about where you’re cheating in your manuscript. Or identify all the spots where you’re summarizing. Try to actually write those spots in scene-time, not summary-time, and see what happens.
Acknowledge the problem in the text itself. This tactic sometimes works for me when my issue is logistical, like getting a character from Place A to Place B. In my debut, I worried that no one would believe that this sheltered eighteen-year-old girl could travel around the world alone, so I came up with some very complicated travel logistics that made it all work out. But my editor pointed out that now, her voyage was way too smooth. International travel, we all know, has hiccups. In trying to solve the problem of believability, I’d only made it more unbelievable. What if I wrote about the flight delays, the passport control, the terror of a new subway system? What if she had to earn the money for her ticket? That would be a lot more believable than the charmed, glossy-magazine itinerary I’d meticulously planned out.
Try it in a separate document. If you’re like me, and constantly afraid of overwriting, sometimes a separate document helps. Set a timer, and try to see how far in the scene or conversation you can get. Add as much texture and detail and life as possible. Something may surprise you. You may surprise yourself.
If You Knew Then What You Know Now
What’s one skill, mindset, or practice you wish you had adopted earlier? How has this skill/mindset/practice improved your writing life? What’s a new thing you’re looking to try out in your writing practice? Let’s chat in the comments:
Until next time,
Kat
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Haili sold her book to Scribner and shared some actionable ways to prep a novel for submission here: https://hailiblassingame.substack.com/p/how-i-sold-my-debut-novel-in-a-week?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true#_
This was so carthartic to write, thanks for including me!! I LOVE how it came out <3