Rewrites

A straight out rejection is not a very pleasant thing to receive, whether by email or snail mail. Either way it is the pits. Even if they add a few nice words, which they don’t always do. (OK, no answer at all is worse.)

But if the reply is not going to be a full acceptance of what you’ve written, then a request to rewrite is a welcome gift. A couple weeks ago, I heard from one periodical, one that pays no less. They couldn’t use a piece I had submitted as written, but since they really liked what I had to say, they were wondering if I would rewrite it to fit their style – and they gave me specific pointers to do just that.

So this week I worked on reworking that piece according to what their contributing editor had instructed and last night sent it back to him, with my sincere thanks. I’m looking to be a repeat contributor, so if I can figure out how to sell articles to this publication, I’m game to do it.

I’ve had a book proposal “out there” bouncing around in the publishing stratosphere the past few weeks. I keep hoping for an agent, but missional books (as this one is) are not the kind of material agents are looking to represent. They don’t sell well and only certain publishers want them.

I’d almost given up on the proposal when a friend wrote back to say they’d passed it on to someone else who had sent it to a certain publisher. Now I’m pretty excited that they think enough of what I’ve written to send it on with their stamp of approval. But I’m also not naïve and I know the likelihood of rejection is high. It comes with the territory. Baseball batters do well to make a hit 3 out of 10 times and writers tend to have an even more dismal record.

So today I’m going to take a fresh look at that proposal, rework it and send it on to still another publisher, one that does a lot of missional books though it is not easy getting your foot in the door at that company. But then I figure it is worth a try. We’ll see what happens. Meanwhile, I have yet another proposal I’m working on for a different kind of book…

One thing I learned in graduate school, no paper is ever perfect and so you can always do one more rewrite. At some point, you call it quits and send the blasted thing in. But it is never finished until it’s been accepted by a publisher or a professor – and then you can always drag it out years later and rewrite it again!