Saturday, April 16, 2011

DYING PIGEONS AND UGLY BABIES

There is a whole urban mythology about writers and their rejected manuscripts. James Mitchener wrote (in his novel THE NOVEL) about having work rejected, something about a manuscript returning and flopping about on his desk 'like a dying pigeon.' All too real. Writers' magazines try to cheer us, 'turn the rejection slip over and write the opening sentence of your next story,' said one. Another would be writer claimed to have papered her study walls with rejection slips. Rejection is like a mother would feel if someone looked into her pram and said, 'What an ugly baby!'

What brought this on? Last month I posted one of my dying pigeons to a blog, specifically asking for feed back. Well, I got no feed back, not from either of the two people, one in England one in New Zealand,who clicked on to my story. So seven billion people did not even bother!

I was saved from total despair by a call from a lady in Oamaru who is reading my current work in progress, a novel about a dairy farmer and a rugby player, the rugby player being the heroine, I admire the Black Ferns. Would I please hurry up and write the next bit, my reader asked, she wanted to know what was going to happen. Now that gave me enough confidence to keep on writing for a while.

And to the two nice people who clicked on http://waiata's witterings,blogspot.com thank you anyway, even though you were too polite to comment on my ugly baby.

1 comment:

  1. I'd comment on your story, but when I tried, a message came up: subscribe to Atom to post", and then when I clicked Subscribe, it opened a mail program and asked to import all my mail.

    The story you're writing is going to be great - but you're wrong to ask for comments at this stage; if you get comments, you're just going to start faffing around editing it. Keep writing. Later you can take out the stuff that's extraneous or will work better in a different part of the story.

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