Whenever I’ve been tempted to feel sorry for myself after what feels like a brutal rejection, I think “It could be worse: I could be trying to make a living in Hollywood.” I think about what Jennifer Aniston must have felt like when a casting agent told her she needed to lose 20 lbs. before she’d ever get hired. I imagine what actors like Danny DeVito, Peter Dinklage, or Paul Giamatti have heard during auditions. (“Too short!” “Not handsome enough.” “You? Leading man? Haa!”)

Over the last month, I’ve been riding a tidal wave of rejection with a book proposal my agent’s shopping around. I’ve heard everything: my book’s got too much research, my book’s not researched enough, there’s not enough memoir, there’s too much memoir, I’m too defensive, I need to be more strident, etc. (Luckily, everyone seems to like my writing, which is a very big bright spot!)

I have to admit, though: all that rejection started getting to me. Yeah, me with my crocodile hide! I began to doubt my writing, my talent, my marketability. In my defense, I wallowed for less than a day. Something in me snapped, and I started thinking about how hard it must be for a young actress to keep showing up for auditions, only to be told, “You’re too heavy,” or “We want someone with blond hair,” or “If you were five years younger, you’d be perfect for this commercial!” My rejections were a cake walk in comparison! It made me wonder: do actors really have it harder than writers?

I asked this question of novelist (and magazine writer) Allison Winn Scotch, who just happened to be an actress in a past life. She kindly answered my question on her blog last week, and it seems like my view of rejection is valid: rejections could be much worse.

What do you think? Would you rather be told your writing isn’t worth enough of a magazine’s ink (in writing) or that your eyes are too close together (to your face)? How do you console yourself when you find yourself getting rejection after rejection? Add your comments below!

– Diana Burrell (follow me on Twitter!)

Sarah wrote:

Hi Linda, I have a question and didn’t know who else to ask. I am an accomplished magazine freelancer who has been approached by a semi-public figure to co write a book. However, he doesn’t want to pay me at all, even though writing a proposal and a book would be a ton of work. He says I could just get half of all the royalties. But this doesn’t seem right, and I have no idea how this works. Also, if the book does well, I could get famous, so that’s a reason I don’t want to immediately turn this down…it could be great for my career and lots of writers have approached HIM saying they want to write a book w/him. Should I stand firm about getting paid for my up front work? Thank you, thank you!

My answer:

Sarah, don’t do it! Dangling the idea of future fame and fortune in front of a writer is the oldest trick in the book. What’s great for your career is not writing for free in hopes of some future payout — it’s getting paid for the work you do now. You should get paid for the proposal and you should get a portion of any of the advance and royalties. Another option is that you get paid a flat fee for the proposal and the book and little to none of the advance and royalties. If this celeb is so certain the book will be a hit (which he must be or he wouldn’t be offering you royalties) why doesn’t he pay you now and then make up for it out of his massive royalties later?

I’m not a ghostwriting expert, so please do further research on contract/payment options.

Please come back and let us know what happens! [lf]

When I got the project, I was coming off of a four-month famine, and I needed the dough. So I ignored the red flags. First, the expert co-author took so long playing hardball with the publisher that the deadlines were crunched. Then, she insisted on being the point of contact with the publisher, even though she had never written a book for a publisher before. (With this type of project, the writer is usually the point of contact.) Finally, she set deadlines for the chapters that were way earlier than the publisher’s deadlines — and even wanted Eric and me (my husband was also on the project) to write five chapters within 10 days — when we didn’t even have a finalized table of contents from the publisher.

But the lure of money was strong, and I thought, “I can do anything for three months.” Thereafter followed a month of what can only be called hell. I won’t even get into it here.

I spent last Tuesday evening on the verge of tears, and suddenly I decided: I quit! I’m done. This project is over. I sent our agent an e-mail (it was after hours so I couldn’t call and I wanted to do it right away), and that was it.

I should also mention that while I was working on this project, I got a ton of other work…probably more than 10 magazine assignments. Three of them paid more than one-fifth of what the entire book was to pay, and these articles were only one-hundredth the length of the book.

Before you start throwing things at me, let me say that I’ve reformed. I had a goal meeting with two writer friends the day after I quit the book project, and one of them convinced me that from now on, I’ll take on only projects that I love — and that pay well. I’m currently working on a proposal with my life coach for a book I would actually want to buy myself.

This writer friend also reminded me that I’ve been writing full-time for 12 years, and that I’m a pro. I don’t need to scrape the bottom of the writerly barrel for money. Even though I have famine periods like everyone else, the assignments generally come flowing in without my even having to query anymore.

So: Have you ever ignored red flags and taken on an assignment because you needed the money? What happened? Please share your experiences in the Comments section below! [lf]

I did a little research on book doctors, found someone who looked good, then did my due diligence by asking some trusted writer friends for their opinions. I talked to one friend on the phone who said, “Diana, she’s great — but I don’t think you need her. Let me look at your proposal. Maybe I’ll see something that can be easily fixed.”

I felt my heart race, my cheeks flame. “Okay,” I said weakly. I sat there after the call feeling a bit ill. It had nothing to do with my friend being an amazing writer, someone who gets her essays selected for The Best Food Writing compilations and whose third book is coming out next year from a major publisher. I can take criticism from the best of them.

What it was is that I hate hate HATE asking friends for help. I don’t mind paying for help, thus why I was ready to shell out $500 for a book doctor, but ask a friend to read 50 pages of (what I thought was) sheer drivel? I’d rather pull my own toenails out, thank you. Maybe it’s the eldest child syndrome, or that I’m an incorrigible control freak or that I think, “They’re busy with their own work, they don’t have time to help me.” I’m simply more comfortable helping someone than to be the one accepting help. In my moments of utter self-honesty, though, it has mostly to do with an excess of pride.

I did it. I fought the urge to “forget” sending the file and I sent it. For many of you this might be a “What’s the big deal? Whoopie … you asked a colleague to read your work.” But it was a revelation for me. I’ve been thinking about how, in a way, not asking for help is selfish and keeps a relationship unbalanced. Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. If you’re always doing the giving, it doesn’t give your friends or colleagues the chance to give back. The relationship becomes a one-way street, with the chronic giver in this quasi-Godlike benefactor role while the chronic receiver gets stuck playing the mere mortal.

I’ve decided that I’m going to lower my guard and start asking for more help. So my writing friends out there, watch out.

How about you? Do you have a hard time asking friends to critique your work and such? How do you handle it? Add your comments below. [db]

I sort of had this problem a few years ago when I was writing a branded book for a publisher. It took me about four months to write it, but during that time I had to keep the money coming in with magazine assignments. What was different about our problem was that I actually felt frustrated by the book, which was gobbling so much time (not to mention dealing with the publisher was a HUGE time suck/pain in the ass). Whether you like writing articles while writing books — or hate it — the two practices are necessary for most working writers because the average nonfiction book advance rarely covers living expenses during the time one needs to write the damn book. Juggling between book writing and magazine writing can indeed be tough, and made more difficult when you don’t want to hold one of those balls.

Since it sounds like those newspaper articles are non-negotiable for you — you have to do them or starve — I’d look for ways to make the work more palatable. Off the top of my head, you could:

• Find some new fast-paying clients who can offer work that’s more interesting to you.
• Ask for a bump in pay on future newspaper articles. Sometimes a little extra money tempers resentment.
• Pitch some story ideas relating to your book to new well-paying markets. Not only do you have the research done, you’re interested in the material, it gives you some good prepublication PR for the book, AND you might get enough work so that you don’t have to do the boring newspaper stories in the future.
• Set aside one or two days a week to commit to your newspaper work. Just focus 100 percent on the newspaper stuff during that time, then when you go back to your book work, you don’t have to agonize.
• If you can afford it, outsource. You can get a transcriptionist to do your tapes, hire a high school student to help you with research over the summer, even pay someone to clean your house or organize your office. What could you hand off to someone else that would make you feel less stressed while you’re juggling?
• Break all of your work — book and newspaper — down into bite-sized chunks. I think what happens to a lot of people doing both kinds of work is that they get overwhelmed. When you see everything in doable tasks on paper, it takes a lot of the fear and agony out of the work.

Any other ideas for K? Add them to the comments section below.

If you’ve got a writing-related question for us, send it to questions[at]therenegadewriter[dot]com. [db]

Kayleen, just reading your description of the photos piqued my interest. Why did the two composers hire a photographer? Why were they traveling around the world? Was it for fun, or had they hit a creative lull and were looking for inspiration? Were they good friends — or lovers? And why did the musical fail? It seems like there’s some kind of story here … whether it’s a magazine article or the subject of a book would depend on answers to questions like these. The fact that you can’t get the pictures out of your head is a good sign, but I don’t think pictures alone will sell this. (As for publishers not wanting to do books with lots of photos — it’s more because of photographer costs rather than printing costs. Here, the photos exist, so what you have to worry about are rights. But that’s putting the cart before the horse.)

At the very least, I think you can get an article out of this (“The Last Trip of X and Y”) and place it somewhere like the Smithsonian magazine or — gasp! — the New Yorker with the right angle. If your additional research unearths some really fascinating stuff about this trip, then start thinking about a book. Good luck, Kayleen — again, it sounds engrossing. I love stories like this.

Writing related questions for the Renegade Writers? Send them to questions[at]therenegadewriter[dot]com. [db]

Hilarious! Dennis Cass should be in standup (maybe he is?) … his timing is perfect and he’s 50x funnier than Jerry Seinfeld. My favorite line: “You know what’s funny about the Oprah question … I would have just called you and said ‘I’m going on Oprah.’ I wouldn’t have let you come to me.” [db]

While the Renegade Writer and the Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rock have received mostly 5- and 4-star reviews on amazon.com, we’ve gotten a few 1- and 2-star zingers. (I know — can you believe that? What the HECK?!) I can see some people not liking our books because they’re perky or chatty; were we pedantic and dour, we’d get 1- and 2-stars for being that … you can’t please all the people all the time. And I admit some of the low reviews leave me scratching my head, like the reader who wrote that our query book was “too general — not enough specific information on ‘how to write a query.’ ” (Note to Linda: let’s scrap the editors’/writers’ comments on each query for the next edition and include a section on where fingers should be placed on the keyboard.) I’m being snarky, but you know what? Bad reviews happen when you’re an author. Readers are entitled to their opinions. Speaking for Linda, I know we’re both grateful for all the wonderful reviews we’ve gotten, along with the hundreds of e-mails from satisfied readers that have appeared in our mailboxes over the years, so spending a lot of time obsessing about the cruddy reviews we get now and then seems, I don’t know, ungrateful? Pointless? A colossal waste of time?

I remember very clearly a conversation I had with Linda when we’d finished the first RW book and we were wondering what readers would think of it. I recall predicting, “I think people are going to either love it or hate it.” As luck would have it, love was on our side. I also remember saying I didn’t really care because I loved our book. We’d worked hard on it, I was proud of how it turned out, and I stood by what I’d written. Rotten reviews would not be able to take that away from me.

It might be a good attitude for this spurned romance author to adopt. [db]

I’ve come to some hard conclusions. First, writing about books is something that I love, but it’s not the best way to make money as a freelancer, especially when I now have to pay a mortgage. Reviews only pay $50-$150 each, which is far from what I make in writing about other topics, like health and fitness. I also started to lose track of why I like to read, which I posted about in my last update. Reading was no longer a hobby. It was a job. So I pulled back from my original goal RW goal and re-thought where I wanted to be.

That lead me back to where I started my book dork quest: a blog. I had been blogging about the South Jersey Shore and my book writing process at downtheshorewithjen.blogspot.com, so I started a new project called bookaweekwithjen.blogspot.com. I set out to read a book a week, and write about it. I didn’t make any rules about what I could or could not read. New books, old books, kids books, grown up books, mysteries, romances, self help — they all counted toward my tally, and I could also write whatever I wanted to write about them. I didn’t need to smash my opinion into 350 or 650 words. I could relate the book to my life, and even throw in youtube clips of my favorite TV show if I thought it was relevant to whatever memory the book brought to mind.

And an amazing thing happened. The blog has improved my reviews — both on the blog and in print. My writing more energetic, and I’m taking chances. In my review of Jason Roeder’s Oh the Humanity! for the St. Pete Times, I wrote that the book was best used as a bathroom book. I never would have tried that before, but the editor left it in, and then assigned me another review. I’m not picking books to read based on what I think I can sell, but on what I want to read, and I’ve been selling more reviews. Most important, I’m enjoying reading again.

I think one problem with being a writer is that we forget about what a reading, writing — heck, even living — can be and start to see everything as a possible sale. By creating my own forum for book reviews, I’ve found the joy of reading again, and it’s spilling over into my bank account. Who’d have thunk? [Jen Miller]