Author Bites - Holly Schindler on the Rejection Spank

Because I loved A Blue So Dark so, I extended an invitation to Holly Schindler to guest post and she graciously agreed. Yay! I think Holly's post will be pretty poignant to a lot of us. Since so many of us are writers, when we see all those books coming out, we might not help but think that the road those books traveled was an easy one. But chances are it wasn't. Holly's trip to publication was a long and arduous one. All I can say is if I were her, I would have pasted all those rejections to my walls and used them as padding for my head. I'm just saying. Thanks for stopping by, Holly!

My debut YA, A BLUE SO DARK, was released last May to some rave reviews. The book earned a starred review in Booklist. VOYA called it “a lyrical tapestry…a work of poetry.” And bloggers fell in love with the book, too…Kristi at The Story Siren called BLUE The Most Beautifully Written Book in 2010.

With so much positive attention, you’re thinking, surely the book was an easy sell. Probably never got rejected once. Right?

Nope. Couldn’t be more wrong.

I wrote BLUE in late 2006, and had to revise the book globally at least four times before I sold it to Flux in early 2009. But in-between rewrites, I also submitted the book to every agent and editor I thought might be interested…

In all, the book was rejected more than 80 times by agents and editors before finally finding a home at Flux. That’s not a typo. More than 80 times.

And BLUE was only one of many manuscripts I had shopped in the seven and a half years I worked full-time trying to get a book accepted…I’d bet, if I went back through all my old submission material, that I was rejected at least a thousand times before I started to finally sell my manuscripts.

I say that not to scare anyone wading out into submission waters. I say it to inspire them. I really doubt that writing’s any easier of a gig to break into than acting…or playing music…It takes just as much discipline, just as many years of sacrifice as you pursue your dream…
But if you truly take the plunge, if you give it everything you’ve got, if you jump in and never let up, you’ll get there. And the longer it takes to finally get to the goal of a published book, the sweeter that victory will taste…

If you liked A Blue So Dark, be sure to check out Holly's next book, Playing Hurt, due out next week!