“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” — Howard Aiken
Persistence is necessary in this business, but persistence shouldn’t make you blind. Or stupid.
I’m thrilled right now because after 32 rejections/no responses and just a little less than a year, I finally sold a story idea that I’m very excited about. The cherry on top is that the editor thinks it will be a fabulous piece, assigned it at no fixed word count (”take whatever you need to tell the story”) and because it’s fairly research-intensive, is paying higher than the publication’s average rate.
He also wants it as soon as possible.
Oh, and this is a publication I’ve wanted to work with for ages.
What’s even more surprising to me is that after so many “good story, but not for us,” responses, this editor jumped very quickly to assign it, because I was being a little impatient and he didn’t want to lose it.
An editor who shares my vision. I like that.
Another idea that I’ve been shopping lately– 7 rejections so far– is one that I had almost given up on. I know it is a strong story, I know that it is something that needs to be talked about, and I know it’s going to surprise many people, but so far, the only editor who wanted it, said, “I would love to buy this, but it’s at least a 3,000-word story and our finances aren’t currently permitting us to assign anything more than 1,000.”
But the other day, a friend somehow chanced upon this story as well (it hasn’t been widely reported), and was so very excited about doing it. Until he found out that I’d been working on it for months now. He graciously withdrew from the idea because it’s “Mridu’s story,” but he had been so fiercely in love with it that it gave me renewed hope. (And also? How completely awesome are my friends?)
In both cases, I’ve believed in the story enough to pursue it. The ideas have been very strong and why they didn’t sell immediately, I don’t know. What I do know is that I have repeatedly asked people for feedback and have repeatedly been told that it’s a fluke– these ideas should be flying. Editors should be auctioning for them. So I’ve kept pitching.
That’s persistence. Then, there’s stupidity. Stupidity is refusing to accept that something is being rejected repeatedly because it’s plain and simple crap.
Some of my early proposals were like that. There was no point getting attached to them, but of course I did. I sent them out over and over and over, banging my head against the wall, wondering why people weren’t buying, when the problem was, how could they? I could have sent them out fifty thousand times and they wouldn’t sell. That’s fact.
Experience helps, of course. I saved all my queries and when I looked at some that hadn’t sold three years later, I could almost immediately tell why.
I think it’s important to not become so persistent, at least initially in your career, that you fail to see that maybe the reason that idea keeps coming back rejected is because it’s just bad. It’s important to have many ideas– dozens– so that you’re not too worried if a few don’t sell. It’s important to take another look every ten or so times it’s rejected and see if you can revise. And it’s important to retire oft-rejected ideas for at least a few months so that you can come back to them with a new perspective.
But when you truly believe in something, don’t stop at ten rejections, or twenty, or even thirty. The thirty-second time might just be the charm.