They were not lovers, but in my mind, they should have been. I was especially taken with the story of winner Kelly Clarkson and runner-up Justin Guarini. The singers were great, and I was astonished at their grace under the pressure of competition on national television, especially when many of them were so young. I had been a music major in college before I was an English major, and I had expected this show to be a joke of bad singers publicly exposing themselves, but I was wrong. He wouldn’t take a bottle at night unless he was distracted by music, so we started watching a new sort of TV show called a “reality show”-specifically, a brand-new hit called American Idol. We sold the house, moved to Atlanta where my husband finally found another job, and bought another house.
I became the sole breadwinner for our new family. My husband was laid off in the recession after 9/11. But after so many years of trying (I’d finished my first manuscript and sent it to agents and publishers in 1990, when I was twenty years old) and so many near misses (I’d had two agents in the ensuing years who had almost sold my books) and so many words written and mostly unread, I needed a break. I never thought I was walking away permanently. I didn’t think I could take this heartache anymore on top of starting a new job as a freelance copyeditor, buying and renovating my first house, and most importantly, taking care of the baby. Normally I would have taken a deep breath, rewritten my query letter, and sent manuscripts out again-or started a new book. And everything hurts a million times worse when you’re pregnant. A near miss hurts because you were almost there, but now, you’re not. The manuscript had made it all the way to the editorial board meeting, the last step in saying yes, before they said no.Ī good rejection hurts because a real person is turning you down, not an uninhabited address in New York. This particular good rejection said that the YA market was abysmal, but if the market had been better, the publisher would have bought my novel. A good rejection is one in which the editor writes you a personal letter rather than sending you a form letter and praises your work before dashing your hopes into tiny, sharp pieces. In 2001, I received a “good rejection” from a major YA publisher for my seventh manuscript. Read on as Jennifer Echols reveals how she went through her turning point on February 14, eight years ago… 99-in which I asked authors the question: What was your turning point as a writer? I’m honored and excited to host their stories. This guest post is part of the Turning Points blog series here on distraction no.
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