Utopia, Iowa, my YA
novel, is being published by Candlewick Press today (FEB 10) and that’s a most
excellent thing. I’m very grateful. But it almost didn’t happen. That is to say
Utopia, Iowa’s road to publication
was not a smooth superhighway. It was more like a road I drove in rural Mexico
one summer not long after I graduated from high school, one that was an
obstacle course of potholes and cracked pavement and that eventually went from
poorly paved to not paved at all, then to mud, and then ended in what appeared
to be a cow pasture. My choices were hang with the cows or go back and try to
find another road. I like cows but…
How many rejections did Utopia, Iowa,
get? I could probably ask my amazing agent for an exact number, but I’ll guess
in the neighborhood of fifteen, including one from the publisher who ultimately
accepted and published it (though not the same editor). And also--an important
detail- the version she accepted was not that same version that had been
rejected.
We’ve all seen the lists of novels that
were rejected numerous times and ultimately became huge bestsellers and/or literary
classics. To name a few…
Harry Potter
and the Philosopher’s Stone--at least 11 rejections. (Bazillion copies sold)
Lord of the Flies:
20 rejections (15 million+ copies sold) Classic
A Wrinkle in
Time: 26 rejections. (millions sold) Classic
I don’t know how many of these
manuscripts, if any, were rewritten during or after rejections. I have read
that J.D.Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye
was rewritten after many, many rejections and only then accepted by a publisher.
If you enjoy these kinds of lists
here’s a long one at this site. http://www.literaryrejections.com/best-sellers-initially-rejected/
Obviously, no one knows for sure what
people will buy—so there’s that. But also, since there are a lot of critically
acclaimed novels and even classics on the list I’ve linked to, it’s fair to say
that experienced editors and publishers may also be wrong about the quality of
a novel.
So there’s that.
But what I’d like to focus on is I
wrote a manuscript that was the best I could write at the time and that was
handily rejected. Eventually, we had to admit that it wasn’t going to sell. I
left it in my documents and moved on. I wrote another novel and that one was
accepted. And then I wrote another and that one was accepted, too.
But I never entirely forgot that
manuscript I’d left behind. Something about it, even after years, still
interested me. Maybe part of that interest was that it was set in Iowa, the
state I grew up in and hadn’t been back to for many, many years. But I also
think I felt a connection to it that I never entirely broke free of. So I pulled
the manuscript up and read through it. I still liked parts, but I saw a big
problem in the manuscript that I hadn’t seen before. There were two stories and
they were competing with each other—not working together. I thought about this
problem for a day. Did I really want to go back to the manuscript again? It was
going to take a lot of work and a lot of time and I could quite possibly end up
in the same place—that damn cow pasture. Ultimately, the
answer for me was yes. Part of the yes was that foolish stubborn steak so many
writers have that serves us for both good and ill, but part of it was that I
thought I could fix the story, that I could make it much better. It was worth
the gamble.
So I tried.
And that version of Utopia, Iowa, sold on its first
submission and made me very happy. I don’t want to say we should never give up
on our manuscripts. Most writers have a few they were wise to give up on.
However, I do want to say that if you have a manuscript buried in your
documents folder that you couldn’t publish, maybe one that came close to being
published or one you still feel connected to in some way, it’s worth taking a look
at it again. Maybe the time away will give you the distance you need to see it
more clearly. You never know. Writing, like publishing, is seldom a straight
road.
Congratulations, Brian!!
ReplyDeleteI SO have a manuscript like that, and I'm actually planning to open it and give it another go later this week. Part of me is dreading it. (Cow pasture says it all.) Thanks for re-motivating me with your publication story!
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