No sooner had I received a nice little cheque from Amazon for sales of "In Her Mothers' Shoes" and was thinking all was well with my writing world, along comes a double whammy: not one but two rejections in just over a week. Applications for two mid-career writers' awards had both come to naught. Of minor consolation was that I had been short-listed along with some very illustrious writers for one of the awards - so illustrious in fact that I knew I was unlikely to win. But just the same, rejection, when it comes, hits you hard.
But then, with timing that looks almost like karma, I came across a link to a restorative piece by Rose Tremain about how over the years she had plenty of time to perfect the art of not winning a prize. Written a couple of weeks ago when she didn't win a prize for her novel about Merivel, the piece described how she has learned to frame her smile at awards ceremonies for the moment she learned someone else had won, and how she tried to console herself that the book itself should be all the solace she needs: "It's still there, after all. It hasn't even suffered
the wounding that can sometimes be inflicted by critics. It has just
"not won". It has almost won, but not quite. It is evidently vain to see
this as a catastrophe.Some measure of depression, however, almost always creeps in. A "non-win" is of course a loss."
You can find it at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/08/art-of-not-winning-literary-prizes
About the same time, I came across a passage in a book of Kate Granville's which was equally timely and made me, for the time being, abandon thoughts of giving up writing forever and bring the persistence to bear that I am so well known for: I never give up.
Like Kate Granville, who was amazingly persistent, it's going to mean a lot of rewriting. Hopefully also like Kate Granville, it will result in a much better next novel.
