There can be little in the world of a writer as dispiriting as the whole process of submitting uncommissioned manuscripts.  There is nothing quite like the angst involved in sending something you have written to somebody who has never asked for it, in the hope that they will like it.  It is quite unlike the pressure of writing to commission, when the only real stress is that of fitting in another biscuit before the deadline whooshes by.  You have written it (whatever it is) simply because it felt like a good idea, you are submitting it because you have made a good job of the writing, and then…  ‘Oh dear, it’s such an awful idea.  I’m such a crap writer.  What on earth was I thinking?  Etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum…’  The inevitability of finding a stupid spelling error – usually in the recipient’s name – just milliseconds after it becomes irretrievable is overwhelming.  As is the inevitability of the rejection letter – unless you got the address wrong in the first place…

I have never suffered badly with repeated rejections because I seldom put myself in that position.  By the time that one or two of the little slips has landed on my doormat with the clang of a death knell, I have usually lost interest and moved onto something else.  I listen in wonder to writers who say, “I was accepted at my 138^th attempt” and wonder how they ever found the time for writing.  Everything is so time consuming.  A one page synopsis of your plot?  If I could write it out in a page, why on earth would I bother with the other three hundred?  An introductory letter (or email) including an even shorter plot synopsis, a pitch (usually along the lines of ‘If you can make me rich and famous, I’m sure you’ll do ok as well’), a lot of pleading and a bio.  Who can write a bio without chucking in a load of jokes?  When you look back at your life, you have to laugh don’t you?  I seldom include a bio: if they want to know, they can ask me.  They seldom do.

Rejection is almost inescapable and painful, but it is fleeting: ‘Ok, it was obviously not good enough.  Let’s try again…’  It generally just signals the time to move on.  Keep in your mind that rejection does not mean that what you have slaved over for months is not good enough (although, let’s be honest, that is usually the case) but it is just not what they are looking for.  On another day, who knows?  (A. We all do!)  With the benefit of age it is possible to look back and realise that the good bits made it, and the rest weren’t quite right.  What you have to ask yourself is ‘Do I have the patience to make them right, or do I now have a much better idea?’

My wife will tell you that I am too easily discouraged; that I stop submitting because I am too easily disheartened, but that’s not really true.  Generally I have grown bored with what I am submitting long before I have finished the tedious slog of actually doing it and certainly before the rejection slips begin to arrive.  I have a window of a few days to get through the whole tiresome rigmarole before I find something else to fuel my imagination.

I do try, but probably the pressure gets me.  My mind starts to wander and… the last two submissions I have made have been of an old draft and to a recipient with a letter missing from their name.  I’m surprised they even bother to send me the obligatory slip.  Perhaps my whole career has been dogged by the lack of a Miss (or Mr, obviously) Moneypenny: someone to do all of the bits I can never quite get right, to make tea and to fish my hat out of the bin below the hatstand now and then.

Like all writers, I regularly ask myself ‘Why do I bother?’  Answers on a postcard, please.