Ticking the Rejection Box

Every great writer is a reject.

JK Rowling got rejected from every publishing house name before Bloomsbury took her. The Da Vinci Code, The Chronicles of Narnia, even Dr Suess where all rejected a number of times before they finally found the right agent or publisher. In fact, all the books you can recognise in the photo to the right have been rejected.


If you write and aim to publish that writing to a public audience, then rejection is inevitable. Every writer or publisher will tell you exactly that. But no matter how many times you tell yourself you'll be okay with that, that you understand its part of the business, it still hurts when it happens.

At first you turn your nose up at the rejection, disagreeing with every comment on your work and convincing yourself that you were just too good for that agent. Then the tears come. The 'I'm a terrible writer and I should give up now' wails.

And then you take a couple of days. You go over the feedback that agent may have given you and you really think about it. About why this could have affected their inevitable choice and how you can fix it.

Through my experience I decided to take every criticism, note them down and then think of ways to remove the problem from the story - whether that be adding to word count with more scenes or removing the subplot or character completely. I mapped every chapter and every characters appearance on my Halls bedroom wall and found that I could now recognise where I'd gone wrong - something I couldn't see before.

When it comes to your own writing you're usually blind. Every single word is perfect and the completed manuscript is your treasured child that, when its beaten down, you feel every bruise too. But there are two choices - two solutions.

Either learn to look at your work subjectively and become a hard critic. Read through your work with new eyes and be tough with your cuts and edits. Not many have the heart or ability to do this successfully.
Or, find a critique partner or group. Many published writers recommend joining one of these groups if you look on their FAQ pages, but if you can't find one in your area or one that doesn't cost, turn to a friend or family member. If they're interested in the genre they may be interested in being your first reader - and possibly having a mention in the acknowledgements. Even a classmate can be helpful. If they're a good person they'll be honest with you when you ask.

The Rejection box is a painful one to tick but its necessary for every writers journey. And most of the time those rejection emails are what make you a better, stronger writer.

Spring Begins with Controversy

Every university is filled with societies; the Norwegian society, the LGBT society, the film society. But the drama society at Roehampton, known to the students as the Roehampton Players, have been the centre of attention on campus recently.

They decided to shake off the winter chills with their production of 'Spring Awakening'. It was their first time producing the musical and taking into consideration their sold-out shows of 'Guys and Dolls' and 'Rent' over the past few years, the show was expected to be successful.

I wanted to make this blog post because 'Spring Awakening' isn't your usual classic fun and bouncy musical. It's a controversial German play that was written by Frank Wedekind and adapted into a rock and roll musical for Broadway by Duncan Sheik and Steven Satar in 2006. It tackles the themes of teenage sexuality, abuse and suicide, which caused it to be banned in Germany and vastly censored in the UK when it was first released.

This type of play could have caused many issues for the Players, which led to my interest to write about it for the Journalism module on my course and in telling you all about it on this blog. 

The Players are no strangers to controversy. Last year they decided to produce 'Rent' which explores sexuality as well as drug abuse, so the campus already had a good idea what they were walking into.

But when I entered the campus theatre last night and the lights went down my stomach flipped. I'm close friends with the Vice President of the society and I had interviewed various members of the cast for my Journalism piece, so I felt a deep connection to the play already. However, even I didn't know how it would be portrayed on the stage.

When the lights came back on I stood from my seat and clapped until my hands hurt. There were tears in my eyes after the emotional ending and I was proud of the society for producing such a daring play with such confidence.

For my Journalism assignment I interviewed Abbie Mccrone, the lead actress in the play and the President of the society, where she said: ‘This makes youngsters know they're not weird and that things like homosexuality shouldn't be frowned upon,' and in the performance they showed no fear when they tackled homosexual relationships, a teenagers struggle with suicide and an on-stage sex scene without fear or hesitation.

I think that the open representation of sexuality and issues of all kinds on a university campus is incredibly courageous and necessary. So many young people come to university plagued with troubles and scared to express themselves. They're surrounded by new people that may judge who they are or what they think and there's so much controversy in the media and in society that people are afraid to be who they truly want to be. 

The Roehampton Players tackled this problem head on with an emotional but ballsy performance, sticking up a middle finger (literally for one of the musical numbers) to anyone who dared to contradict their choice. Though this a cautionary tale for parents who don't talk to their children about sexuality and teenagers who act without thinking, it is also so much more for the audience and the people involved.

As Matthew Hudson, the President of the LGBT society, told me for my Journalism assignment: 'Love is love, a kiss is a kiss, no matter who it is between,' the Roehampton Players certainly proved that this weekend in their performance and sent out a lasting message: 

Be who you want to be, do what you want to do, and leave behind those who think being different is bad.