Hellooooo everybody! (Said in the voice of Grover) Can you tell I’ve been reading a lot of Sesame Street books to my one and a half year old, haha. Now finally some time for me, writing here I come!
Welcome to the blog hop! We have a blog hop going on each week. All of us authors get asked a question and we respond, hopping from one person to the next. If you missed what the lovely Leslie Hachtel had to say just click and pop back. Leslie also provided us with the topic for today. She asks us: What is the worst rejection you ever got? And what was the best? Or the funniest? And how did these help you in your writing?
Even though my novel is not published yet, I’m hoping soon and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I’ve had some good, bad and interesting feedback. I can’t really call the feedback a rejection because I haven’t sent my manuscript anywhere. But I’ve had a great group of people read it and tell me what they’ve thought. Here are some reviews/rejections/responses I’ve had.
I’ll start with the best reviews that I’ve had. Someone told me they loved the book, especially all the descriptions of the sea/ocean. (I’m very much a water person, so this made me happy.) Another person enjoyed the main character and all her stubborn ways.
The worst response was when someone told me that I needed to make one of my good characters evil so they could be in league with another evil character. I couldn’t have just one working on his/her own. I accepted this feedback, but I didn’t change my novel because of it. It would have caused many edits and a lot of re-plotting.
And… the most interesting review I’ve received is to remove the first sixteen to twenty pages of my manuscript. Now this is the part that I’ve been struggling with when editing. My novel is way too long and I do need to cut out some writing, maybe this is the way to do it. The person said I really didn’t need those pages because I go into detail throughout the book. It made me sad to cut out all that hard work. However, it gave me a great idea. I can use those first twenty pages and write a prequel novella on one of the other characters!
I can’t wait until I’ve published my novel but I’m nervous about the rejections I could get. I need to get a thicker skin! I will look at it as a learning experience and it will help me to become a stronger writer in the future. 🙂
That’s it for me today! What was the incredible Carrie Elks worst rejection? Continue on the hop, until next time!
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