Let’s get the poor me’s over with. Self-pity does not become you. You will develop a wrinkled brow and a turned-down mouth.
All the same, it is a blow, as Mr Rochester, staggering, said to Jane Eyre when Mr Mason turned up unexpectedly from the West Indies. ‘Jane, I’ve got a blow; I’ve got a blow, Jane!’
‘Sorry, not for us’ – not for us, not for us, not for us, not for us, not for us – rejected six times… Ouch!
All that time wasted, all that endeavour, all that wrestling with language, tenses, structure, all that time taken away from family and friends, and for what? For nothing.
Bitter. A humiliation. A blow. A public failure.
Okay. Over. But what next? Six times means re-think time.
Don’t panic. Just ask yourself why. Work out what went wrong. Why no-one wants the novel on which you worked so hard. Research says that 80 per cent of all submitted manuscripts are rejected, and I have no reason to doubt it. But ask yourself exactly what category (or categories) yours may have fallen into – what pigeonhole.
Face it. Be brave. Check the possibilities described below. Then do something about it. Look, learn, re-draft. Edit. Re-edit. Send nothing out that you do not believe to be perfect, that you can’t argue for word by word. Well, within limits. And best to know these limits. Read on.