The Word Cloud

Here's a very interesting blog post from Greenhouse Literary Agency.

Flitted back onto Cloud for a few moments and have only speed-read this as yet, but yes it does!

It does make me feel for them, it really does. Seem like a nice bunch.

Very enlightening, Secrets, and useful to know.

I thought it was good and answered some questions that I have been trying to find the answers to. I tend to forget just how many MS they must recieve so that was a bit of a reminder.

It makes you feel sorry for them, especially when they reject something kindly and get a nasty respond usually one that basically says 'you know nothing'. I feel like saying to the person if this Agent knows nothing why did you send them your work - your the idiot!
Never submitted anything yet, but when i do, i'll remember what i just read and be professional and polite in my approach.
Thank You!
x

Can't believe folk respond so negatively to being turned down! I've had quite a few rejections to date, from agents and publishers. Yes, it's disappointing, yes it hurts, yes it makes me question whether I'm doing the right thing! But if I can't politely respect the other person's view, accept their verdict, pick myself up and try again somewhere else, I'm never going to succeed.
Politeness costs nothing, whoever we deal with.

Yes, it's a very good post, that one. From a classic blog about the whole business, from an editor contemplating the furious or just plain crazed reactions to rejection:

"What these guys have failed to understand about rejection is that it isn’t personal. If you’re a writer, you’re more or less constitutionally incapable of understanding that last sentence, if you think there’s any chance that it applies to you and your book; so please just imagine that I’m talking about rejections that happen to all those other writers who aren’t you.

"Anyway, as I was saying, it realio trulio honestly isn’t about you the writer per se. If you got rejected, it wasn’t because we think you’re an inadequate human being. We just don’t want to buy your book. To tell you the truth, chances are we didn’t even register your existence as a unique and individual human being. You know your heart and soul are stapled to that manuscript, but what we see are the words on the paper. And that’s as it should be, because when readers buy our books, the words on the paper are what they get.

"This all becomes clearer if you think about it with your reader-mind instead of your author-mind. Authors with books are like mothers with infants: theirs is the center of the universe, uniquely wonderful, and will inevitably and infallibly be loved by all who make its acquaintance. This has its good aspects; books, like infants, need someone to unconditionally love them, and champion all their causes. On the other hand, it can be a form of blindness.

"Your reader-mind has a different understanding of the whole book thing. Your reader-mind knows what it’s like to walk into a bookstore, or a Costco, or a Target, and confront a wire rack the size of your living-room wall, with slot after slot filled with books. At that moment, standing there in front of that rack, you don’t much care about encouraging new writers, or helping create a more diverse literary scene, or giving some author a chance to express herself. You want a book that will please you, and suit your needs, and do it right now. Dear reader, you are many things, but “gentle” isn’t one of them."

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html