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Rejection Letters – Learn From Your Mistakes and Become a Better Writer

By Jo M Draper

 

As a writer, it is almost a given that your dream is for someone to notice your talents, realise your natural flair for words, and agree that your work is worthy of gracing the shelves of bookstores worldwide. Before you achieve that dream however, you have to let publishers know you’re out there. And that means writing letters, which in turn, if you’re lucky, means receiving replies to those letters. And more often than not those replies will be rejection letters.

 

But as disheartening as they are, rejection letters are a valuable tool for writers. If you get them at all, you should be honoured that the publishing team has actually taken the time to write. Many publishers do not enter into any communication if they do not want to see more of your writing, or take your manuscript any further. If you’re one of the ‘lucky rejects’ you may also receive some valuable feedback in your rejection letter. The natural instinct, when you receive such a letter is to dismiss it as a mark of your failure, and very few would happily trawl through this letter again and again, to try to take anything from it. But if you want to eventually succeed as a writer then this is exactly what you should do.

 

Rejection letters can often highlight really important elements of your writing, or your approach, that may be the reason for your lack of success to date. For example, a publisher may comment that they like the basic plot but the characterisation may be weak, or lacking in substance. This comment should be taken positively, firstly, because of the statement of fact that your plot has merit, and secondly because the characterisation is something that can be worked on and hopefully progressed to a point that publishers will consider taking it onto their list for the year.

 

A rejection letter may also highlight failings in presentation; did you follow the publisher’s submission guidelines? If not, then many won’t even bother to read your work. This is a really important point as potentially, the best literary works could be missed simply because the manuscript was not printed single sided, or with double spacing. Take note of any of these points that are raised in your rejection letter and make sure that you do not make the same mistake again.

 

Learning from your rejection letters can only have a positive impact on your writing and will, hopefully lead to positive results from future manuscript submissions.

 

Do you need help to get your manuscript ready for submission to publishers? Then contact [http://www.jmdeditorial.co.uk/copy-editing.html]JMD Editorial and Writing Services today

 

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Rejection-Letters—Learn-From-Your-Mistakes-and-Become-a-Better-Writer&id=6849134] Rejection Letters – Learn From Your Mistakes and Become a Better Writer

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