Reasons for Rejection

Usually if you get a reason for a rejection you can see the sense behind it. But sometimes the reason for a rejection may seem very unfair.

I have a friend who used to write for women's magazines. He once wrote a story (for a magazine which no longer publishes fiction) and it was rejected on the grounds that swans don't swim in the sea. Otherwise the fiction editor loved the story, but she just couldn't publish something so - wrong!

Swans do swim in the sea! I've seen them - lots of times - and so has he. This happened many years ago, but it still makes my skin prickle with a sense of unfairness.

I had a particular story rejected - it came back within the week - with the reason that what I had written about would never have happened. It would resonate with the readers as completely unbelievable. People wouldn't have behaved like that and many of their readers were of an age to know. What I had written was an account of something that happened to my mother in the war. It had happened - I know because my mum told me and while she was a spinner of yarns, she didn't lie!

Sigh.

Others have been rejected because a character was just too nasty with no redeeming features. We all know there are people like that who are just thoroughly through and through evil and so do the readers, BUT those readers don't want to read about people like that and that is perfectly understandable.

But after that mini rant, it is nice to know why a story is being rejected. You can learn a great deal from it.

I used to keep all my rejection slips when I first started sending things in until they started demanding daily walks and their own supply of Maltesers. I still have a few rejection slips with a kindly encouraging comment written on the back by a fiction editor. Those comments and the letters that ended with a request for more stories were what kept me going.

The main thing to remember is that however good we think our story is when we send it in to a magazine the fiction editor knows her readers and what they like. It's no use getting all precious and het up about it. They might even have to reject a story because they've only just bought one like it. Or it might be that the story is simply no good and badly written - I know I look at some of my rejections and think "What the hell was I thinking sending that in . . .?"

Fiction Editors are Human Beings and they know what they are doing and why they are doing it! If you are given a reason for a rejection, then pay heed to it. And if you are not, then try to figure it out for yourself - you can only learn from the experience.

Anyone got any favourite rejection stories they'd like to share? Any that particularly stung?

Embarrassing Bodies and Snow

I love Embarrassing Bodies - the programme that is. Not that I see much of it because I'm hiding behind a cushion or my hands for much of it and have to rely on someone with a stronger stomach to tell me when "that bit's finished."

I feel so sorry for some of the people who appear on that show and admire them greatly for their willingness to get their embarrassing bits out and allow them to be filmed. I've been asking around and quite a few people would go to see the Embarrassing Bodies doctors because they have things troubling them that they wouldn't want to "bother" their doctor with.

You can read about it on the Channel 4 website, here http://www.channel4embarrassingillnesses.com/

Then a programme about snow which turned out to be very interesting. Pure water doesn't freeze - they proved it by putting test tubes in a freezer and when they added a tiny crumb of frost to the pure unfrozen water it froze instantly. Fascinating. As was the film of the winter of 1963. All I remember of that winter is having a lot of fun in the snow and getting upset about so many dead birds.

There was a bit about Charles Dickens - I think they said six out of his first ten Christmases were white ones, but I may be wrong - I was tired by then and my brain is a sieve. Michael Rosen was reading from A Christmas Carol . . . it was all very - snowy!

It's on the BBC website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jw9z6/The_Weather_Snow/

I thought a picture or two might be nice and I thought an embarrassing body part, steamy wart, pickled bunion or something snowy? You will be relieved to see I chose the latter.

Displacement activities

Mine used to be Word Mojo until I had it removed from my computer. It had to go. I was spending too many hours on it and when I started seeing the grid as I drifted off to sleep I knew it had become an addiction.

At first it worked, but gradually I have found another displacement activity. Not that I needed to look far. It had always been there, a niggling temptation. I am talking about the internet of course. I go through my favourites one at a time and when I get to the end, I start again at the beginning.

The websites rarely change in between my visits and what exactly is the point of visiting Right Move a dozen times a day? There is no point. It is mindless as is the constant checking of my ipoints account. Have I got enough points yet for the £30 Amazon voucher? No I haven't just as I hadn't ten minutes ago and won't have in ten minutes time.

Blogs. I even check the ones that haven't been updated. It is senseless. A waste of time. When the internet connection goes down I weep and wail and gnash my teeth and reset the router then wait while it finds itself again. So I can get back to my constant going round and round and going nowhere.

At the moment I seem to have the attention span of a gnat. I can't read. I can't watch the telly. I certainly can't write when I'm in this mood (except to moan about it in blogalese). Now the internet has gone down again so I won't even be able post this. Woe is me.

Senses

I took the kids to the park, beach and duckpond yesterday. It was the park I played on almost every day as a child, the beach I woke up to every morning and yet it was the pond that brought back the biggest memories.

Why? The scent of a shrub. I don't know what it is, but there was a big bungalow near my house which had it all round the garden and you couldn't walk past without smelling it. There is one shrub in the garden around the pond and the scent was heavy yesterday.

It brought back memories of persuading my mum to walk the long way home from the shops which took us past the pond so I could see the ducks and maybe scrounge a piece of the fresh bread she'd just bought so I could feed them. And walking through the shady lane behind it with Pop, my grandad, holding tight to his hand. So began a cascade of memories which ended up with the milk on the doorstep freezing in the winter and the cream poking out of the tops of the bottles with the little lid perched on top.

So how did I get from a scented shrub to frozen milk bottles? I have no idea, but when I went to bed my mind was whirling with memories.

I've heard it said that the sense of smell is the most powerful. Perhaps it is.

Reading Really Matters

I have almost finished reading The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat. It is not just a novel about the battle for the Atlantic. It is the story of the men who served on board the corvette Compass Rose, their lives at home and at sea. It flows up and down like the waves on the sea, making you cry one minute and smile the next. It is not just a novel, it is an experience and it has already had a profound effect on me.

My father joined the RN as a boy. He was on a cruiser on the Russian (Arctic) convoys. He didn't talk much about them, except to say it was extremely cold - their drinks froze in their mugs before they could drink them.

But I can't talk about him and what his experiences did to him, not here, not now. I know that he saw things that haunted him to the day he died. Oddly enough, reading Wild Swans had already brought home to me some of what he had seen when he was in China. Perhaps that is in part why that particular book was so compelling for me.

It seems a long time to be really getting to know my father more than 30 years after his death, but in some ways I feel I know him better now than I ever did.

The Cruel Sea is is a book I should have read a long time ago and I am glad to have come to it at last. After reading a couple of modern, shallow and forgettable novels beforehand I feel as if I have come home. It may even change my life. Some books have that power.

Which brings me to life changing books, or maybe just books that have had a great influence on me. The first of those must be Black Beauty which I read when I was very young.

I have just ordered a batch of ten books from The Book People for £9.99. Adding those books to my order meant I saved £3.50 postage, so as I see it, I have bought 10 books for (hold on while I get my calculator) £6.49 so if I find two books among the ten that I enjoy reading, I shall feel that I've had my money's worth.

Clearing out

It's no use. I've been trying to write all morning, but I have something on my mind and until I write about it I won't be able to think about anything else.

It's about pigeons - and zoos. And I know a lot of people regard pigeons as vermin and maybe they are, but I don't mind them. I like watching them snuggle up together and coo at each other. I hate seeing one standing at the roadside staring at its dead mate squashed in the road - it makes me want to cry. They obviously grieve. It's sad.

Two of my grandchildren went to a zoo recently. I'm not a fan of zoos, but this one does a lot for the conservation of species. Well so they say anyway. I mean of course they aren't in it for the money, perish the thought. They are there for the animals!

While my 22 month old granddaughter and her 4 year old brother - and several other small children - watched, a pigeon's nest was destroyed. I think it was in a cage with a monitor lizard, but don't quote me on that - it was in a cage with something. The keepers knocked the nest down then smashed the eggs. It happened so quickly that there wasn't time to move the children on.

Several questions here. Why not remove the nest before the pigeons got round to laying eggs in it? Why not leave it where it was? Why not do it when the zoo was closed? How can you run an establishment claiming to be all for conservation while destroying creatures that aren't endangered? Surely life is life and if you're in it to preserve it, then you should respect all life.

And aren't we supposed to discourage children from destroying nests and the like? Maybe there was some evil little villain-to-be (or several) among the children who will think it is great fun to go round smashing eggs. My grandson was appalled. He told me about it and got quite steamed as did I.

And I still feel steamed, even after this mini rant.

Rejections, questions and robots

Would you like to hear about the rejections I've had this week? I've had four. Three have gone to god this time, no more outings for them, but the fourth is currently undergoing a massive rewrite. I can see why it didn't sell. It simply wasn't any good. Funny how a few weeks of not seeing something can knock the scales from your eyes.


A good argument there for putting something aside and rereading it after a couple of weeks before sending it off. I know that's what I should do, but I don't. Normally I know something is ready if I stop thinking about it. If I keep thinking about something after it's gone, then I know deep down that it isn't finished.


Enough of that depressing stuff.


An interesting question for you. I was speaking with a fellow writer today and found that the same thing happens to her as happens to me. I was reading a published story of mine and parts of it seemed unfamiliar.


I didn't write that, I thought. I certainly did not use that name for one of the characters. The editor must have added those unfamiliar bits and I have to admit, I thought it sounded better for it and was kicking myself for not thinking of it myself. So being a bit of a nit-picker, I opened up my original word document and there it all was. It's rather weird and quite bewildering. I mentioned it to my friend Jan and she said the same thing happens to her. Oh the relief!


It's another of those Writer Things. Tell me if I'm wrong! We are all away with the fairies half the time - aren't we?


On Thursday I had to carry home a big silver robot made out of a cereal packet and other kitcheny bits. It was beautiful . . . and my 4 year old grandson was justly proud. But while his back was turned his little sister grabbed it and hugged it and knocked two of the arms loose. Thank god for sellotape that's all I can say.


We walked down to the marshes today. He walked across the field singing "I like em BIG, I like em CHUNKEEEE." Sometimes I don't know what I'd do without him to make me laugh.