Chuck Palahniuk in Consider This has a short chapter called “Troubleshooting Your Fiction.” One of the “problems” is this:
Problem: Your work fails to attract an agent, editor, or audience.
Consider: Does that really matter? If writing is fun… if it exhausts your personal issues… if it puts you in the company of other people who enjoy it… if it allows you to attend parties and share your stories and enjoy the stories told by others… if you’re growing and experimenting with every draft… if you’d be happy writing for the rest of your life, does your work really need to be validated by others?
Brilliant advice, to which I would only add if being rejected makes you more unhappy than the happiness writing brings, you’re into writing for the wrong reason.
If your art brings you pleasure, it will bring pleasure to someone else. If it doesn’t seem “salable,” that’s probably not a bad thing. Salable books aren’t particularly interesting and are forgotten quickly. I would say “these days,” but that’s always been the case.
Harper Lee’s own editors told her To Kill a Mockingbird would be a flop. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
You know what book was a flop in its time? The Great Gatsby.
You know what Hollywood thinks is salable? Sequels, reboots, and piles upon piles of superhero junk. You’ve probably accidentally written better material than that.
You know who else wasn’t salable? Vincent van Gogh. But he still painted over 2000 works, only one of which sold.
You know who received so many rejection letters that he kept them in a box? A man who didn’t make it big until his sixth novel, and now has a museum dedicated to him, at which I took this picture:
Even Shakespeare felt the sting every once in a while, as in Sonnet XXX:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.
So keep coddiwompling to your heart’s delight and eventually you’ll delight someone else’s heart. Until then, amid the barren colorlessness around you, be this bright leaf until that spring comes:
I'd love to hear from you!