Hi! I am frustrated about being rejected about my story. Can anyone be kind enough to read my story and tell me what's wrong? Not creative? Childish? Just please be true and honest.
The story is based on last year's Writers&Artists Short story competition theme(freedom).
I think there is a difference between a beautiful story and a marketable story and I'm not sure where your story would fall in terms of genre. I completely empathise because in order to write the tale I wanted to write I had to let it fall between genres and that is going to make it almost impossible to place.
Have you thought about self publishing? I think my 'baby' is going to end up on Kindle but that's no bad thing, plenty of popular books start out that way.
Hi Sophie
I haven't read your story but I have been rejected. Loads and loads of times. It's normal when you begin to write seriously, and unfortunately it hurts. A lot. Even when you tell yourself it doesn't really matter, the fact is it does.
There's only one way to get over it, I've found, and that's to write better. I did, and so can you. You just have to want to enough to work hard at it. Because that's what most writing is: hard work. I don't think many successful writers simply sit down and let words flow out because they don't. At least not for me, anyway.
I wrote two novels in my teens/early twenties and thought they were brilliant. They weren't of course, and I learned that the hard way. When I went back to writing around eight years ago I'd learned a lot, so my efforts were far better, but it was still hard work.
Stick with it. Learn what you can from rejection because it makes you both a better writer and stronger person. But don't give up - sheer bloody-mindedness is a big help.
Best of luck :)
Hi Sophie. I hope you won't mind a novice making a comment. I have just read the beginning of your work and it reminded me of my novel when I thought I had finished it... I hadn't, I had filled in all sorts of connections in my head as I wrote and not on paper.I think there maybe some of that in your work, but as I said I'm a novice. It was only when, like you have done I asked people to tell me what they made of it that I realised how much work there was to do. mine is now double the length and again (I think) the gaps are filled so the reader understands what is in my head, that remains to be seen! Don't throw your work into the recycle bin rework it instead. Regards Paul.