To the Great and Elder Gods of the Published Word...

I’ve always been the sort of writer who enjoys coming to work when the owls come out to play. The words just seem to get the best out of me when the sun goes down.

I don’t know whether it’s because darkness shortens the distance between my fingers and my brain, or whether it’s just too damned noisy to write worth a shit any other time. Silence reigns…words pour.

The problem is….when words pour in my fiction…silence also reigns from any prospective agent or publisher.

I have a theory.

Rejection, is merely an occupational hazard for any author. Scribes once unknown who are now household names have papered their walls with letters of “thanks, but no thanks”.

To date, Ray Bradbury has had a thousand rejection letters over his 30 year career. And he’s still getting them! Does it put him off ? Does it buggery!

So…my theory is that instead of letting rejection plunge me even deeper into the pit occupied by some rabid Churchillian ‘black dog’, I shall now embrace it. Wrap my arms around it, pat it on the back and hug it like a long-lost friend. I’m even going to give it a name. Loki. (Ok…I like Norse mythology).

And why? Because I believe rejection is a trickster and a cunning spalpeen. I believe that he has been sent by the Great and Elder Gods of the Published Word to test us. To see which of us is worthy enough to have their blood, sweat and tears translated into print on page.

If we wither and fall kicking and screaming at the first, say, 100 hurdles, then we’re not worthy to wear the mantle of published author. Whereas if we keep on punching and refuse to give in, then we show the kind of mettle that these denizens of print are looking for.

Now you might say that there’s a damned mighty flaw in my theory. Maybe even a glaring black hole in reasoning. Namely...

The Great and Elder Gods of the Printed Word have given their approval to a damned load of shit over the years. Books that belong more in a lavatory than any library.

Go into any bookshop. Look on any shelf. There, nestling comfortably alongside brilliant, half-decent, not too bad, tough going but ultimately worth it…there’s a plethora of ‘how-in-the-hell-did-this-pile-of-crap-ever-get-published!’

My theory is that the GEGPW have off days, weeks, months, years and even, dare I say it, bloody centuries! And it’s on those off (times), that excellent writing falls through the cracks and crap penmanship gets the nod. It’s the only reasonable explanation.

So agents and publishers... it’s time to get your shit together. Time to pull up your socks. Time to stop running checkbooks-in-hand towards the nearest numb-brained celebrity with no story to tell and precious little understanding of the written or spoken word. Time to fess up, stick your nervous heads above your pretty little parapets and listen to the collective voice of the great unpublished author.

Oh…and Loki…if you’re listening from a dark corner of in the Great Hall of Valhalla, understand this.

We may, as yet, be unpublished. We may be rejected. But we shall not give up. We shall not wither or pull up lame or spooked. We shall neither waste away nor shall we give up the ghost.

We shall gird our collective loins, battle on, persevere and ultimately triumph!

Bloody well believe it…