Rejection

Today while slogging through the slush pile for children's book submissions at work, I had an interesting thought. As a book editor, I play god to all those aspiring authors sending in manuscripts with the hope that someday they'll be published.

It is a daunting thought that without even a word, I relegated a host of books to the 'reject' pile while only two are in the 'maybe' pile. None made it to the 'yes! of course' pile. Submissions rarely do. When training me on how to go through submissions, one of the senior editors mentioned that 95% of submissions are rejected. I imagine even fewer actually make it into print, what with the arduous process of publishing to slog through. It can make any prospective author quail at he thought of passing through it.

But it is the merest possibility of seeing their words in print that fuels most writers. A kind word will keep them going against all odds. It amazes me how many people who clearly cannot write will churn out submission after submission in the hope that someday one will make it through and their dream will finally be realized.

It's sobering to me as an editor that I hold the power of life and death over their stories, over their words, their characters and even their hopes and dreams. They may eventually be published by someone else, but it will be a difficult process for them nonetheless.

I thought of that a lot when I was an intern for a small publisher of fiction a few years ago. Some of the submissions I read were completely unbelievable and unrealistic. I was laughing with incredulity at several of them. With my background in writing, I could see that these books would never be published, let alone purchased by anyone.

But then I had to remind myself that this was someone's sweat and tears I was laughing at. They truly believed what they had written was good, worthwhile and that people would want to read what they had spent so much time working on. After that I couldn't laugh, or at least not as much. But some of the stories were so bizarre I couldn't stop myself from cracking up. Probably the strangest I have seen involved church missionaries being abducted by aliens and then converting an entire alien race to Christianity. I still can't get over that one.

So the point of this whole thing is that even though I have to dash people's hopes with rejection, I need to remember that there are real people on the other end of those rejection letters. And maybe I will be too, someday, if I can ever get my book finished.