The Rejection that Changed My Writing: Harsh Lessons from Publishing Gatekeepers

And how I keep going after crushing defeat

Like most writers, I know when my work is terrible. Sometimes I think it’s decent. And occasionally—in the darkest, most honest corners of my heart—I believe my work is truly great.

The Brutal First-Page Test

Earlier this month I attended Chuck Sambuchino’s Writer’s Day Workshop in San Francisco. At one of the sessions, attendees could anonymously submit exactly one page—the first page—of our novel manuscripts to be read aloud and critiqued by a panel of agents. The agents were told to raise their hands if at any point during the reading, they wanted to stop. As in, if that page was part of a hypothetical query package, they’d stop reading the page and reject the query. The panelists offered feedback on the page whether they got through to the end or not.

The session was scheduled for 75 minutes and they got through about 40 different first-pages. They finished the page for only about six submissions.

My God, they were brutal. For some first-pages they felt that the descriptions ran too long. For others they felt that the author hadn’t grounded the reader in space, i.e. not enough setting description. They dismissed some out of hand for starting the novel with cliches like the protagonist just waking up from sleep. They disliked some pages for not having a distinct voice, or for having juvenile prose, or for being too confusing.

Other times they would give feedback so vague, it’s impossible to know what they meant. Like a few times the agents would say, “I’m looking for story, and I don’t see that here.” What does having “story” on the first page of a novel manuscript even mean?!?

Going into this session I knew that my manuscript as a whole had some issues that I needed to fix, but I was reasonably certain that my first page was good. I had rewritten it three different times, after all. People in my writing group liked it.

The Moment of Truth

When an agent began reading my page aloud, my heart started pounding in my chest, and my cheeks burned. This was it. A bunch of those other writers’ pages were defective for some reason, but these agents were going to like my first page. They’d definitely get to the end. After months of toiling, here would be my first signal that I was on the right track.

That is not what happened. They barely got past my first two paragraphs. Two out of the four agents raised their hand to stop reading, and that was it.

And if I’m being honest, by the time they raised their hand, even I was growing tired of my page. How is that even possible?

What is the “Perfect First Page”?

After sitting through the reading aloud of a bunch of other first pages by that point, I saw how quickly the successful writers had established 1) who their protagonist was, 2) what their problem was, and 3) a hint of the character flaw that was keeping them from solving their problem.

When the agent reading aloud got to my second paragraph and was still droning on about setting, I was getting impatient for the story to start (which is clearly also what the agents were feeling). And it didn’t help that I had started my novel with an absolute banger of a catastrophe and didn’t elaborate at all on what the main character was going to do about the problem. (That doesn’t show up until page three).

I’ve learned that a huge catastrophe requires an immediate reaction from the point-of-view character. Or I could introduce a smaller problem and lead the reader along just a little longer, but still I have to hint at the character’s inability to solve the problem based on their traits.

Truly, every word of the first page of a manuscript needs to be placed there for a reason. A couple chapters into a manuscript, a writer has hopefully sucked the reader into the story enough to keep them turning pages. We can go deep on setting and exposition then, if necessary. But the very first page—getting that absolutely perfect is paramount. It’s the difference between getting published and not. It’s the difference between selling the book to a reader or not.

Finding My Way Back

Gosh, it hurt to get rejected, so quickly and so definitively. Especially when I was convinced that my page would make it through, that I had something great to offer. Sharing what I considered an example of great writing was a mind trip when gatekeepers in the publishing industry said, “Nope. This is not even good.”

It took me a few days to lick my wounds and get perspective around this whole episode. There is something so psychologically vulnerable about making art. It takes so much energy to gather up the courage to spend time on something so difficult to achieve, like writing a novel and getting it published. I need so much positive self-talk to keep going when my inner critic is constantly telling me that my work is trash. Then to hear from an industry insider, who filters out bad writing for their job, say that my work didn’t cut it—it really takes an emotional toll.

But the good news is that I now know my first page wasn’t going to hack it before I sent out the query package to dozens of agents, only to get rejections and not fully understand why.

The last week or so it has been hard to put the self-doubt aside and keep going. But inspiration sometimes comes to me in the most unusual places. I went down an Instagram rabbit hole learning about the life and habits of one of my all-time favorite actors: Cillian Murphy. What I learned about him is that he cares very little about celebrity and notoriety. What he’s obsessed with is this: the craft of acting. He’s always pushing himself to get better, to stretch his skills just a little more, to try roles that are weird and different and make him learn. He just wants to be a good actor for the sake of creativity and his inner drive for making beautiful, exceptional work.

It was a great reminder, really, of what made me want to give up my crazy prestigious well-paid lawyer job for the folly of being a novelist. It’s because I adore good writing and I would be lucky to spend my days just trying to get better at it, even if I’ll never be great.

Oof it hurts to say that though. I do want to be great. I want to be exceptional even. But Rome wasn’t built in a day. And getting good at anything worth being good at takes time. I’m reminded of Min Jin Lee, who gave up her legal career to write creatively (she went to my law school too: Georgetown!). She claims it took 30 years to write Pachinko. That book went on to be finalist for the National Book Award. I don’t think I have a National Book Award-winning book in me. But if there’s anything I can learn from Lee’s example it’s this: patience.

So here I am, continuing on after crushing defeat—not because I’m certain of success, but because learning the craft of writing is worth the journey.

What about you, friends? How do you keep going after rejection?