The Merky Books New Writers' Prize: on rejection as redirection
I promise it won’t be gloomy.
This blog series is collaboration between Monika Radojevic and the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize. The series will take readers through early stages of the competition as well as providing advice and guidance from a writer’s perspective. To read more of Monika’s fiction, non-fiction and poetry, subscribe to her substack for free.
Read part one here and part two here
This is a post about rejection - I promise it won’t be gloomy. If you are reading this and you have made it through to the writer’s camp, congratulations! But if you haven’t, this post might be for you. (And if you’re reading this as a complete outsider to the Merky Books New Writer’s Prize, hi there!)
After winning the NWP in 2019, I entered loads of poetry and fiction competitions. And I did not win any of them. Every writer I know knows the sting of rejection. Every great, critically acclaimed author has a story about losing a competition, or having their now-famous book passed over and over until finally something stuck. There are endless lists (here and here and here and oh look, here!) about books that were rejected dozens, even hundreds, of times by publishers, before going on to win awards, sell out or become beloved by readers. But knowing something is not the same as feeling something - though I often understand intellectually why my work has been passed over, emotional understanding is a different story, because we (or I at least) so often conflate my value with my writing success. And yes, that’s definitely my problem to solve, but the connection makes sense to me. I pour myself into my work, it is a reflection of who I am and what I believe to be important, and I doubt I am alone in this.
I often think about the fact that had I entered the Merky Books Prize just one year later, I wouldn’t have won. I was in the right place at the right time - and yes, I had a good piece of work to submit, but I was also very lucky. That for reasons beyond my control, my storytelling resonated with that specific set of judges in that specific moment in time - the shadow of Brexit looming large, everyone unaware of a little thing called COVID-19 creeping its way towards us. My writing managed to answer a call I didn't know was being made - I wasn't special, I was lucky. Talented, too, but I have met enough gifted writers to know that talent is absolutely everywhere (thank god, because humanity needs it all), and it is luck, grit and constant, consistent work that propels us forward.
What I am trying to say is that although this kind of rejection feels deeply, intrinsically personal, because it is your art that is being judged, it is not a personal slight at all. It is not a rejection of the intrinsic value of your work, rather, a reflection of the individual tastes of judges, the bias and preferences we all carry as human beings, the context of the work, the context of the world we live in and the latest literary trends. All of this must perfectly align to anoint a winner - what might have worked one year cannot work the next, what failed seventeen times, might succeed on the eighteenth. To put your art out into the world is to do the inevitable, awkward dance with failure, knowing that you may be tripped up occasionally, but trusting in your ability to make it through to the end of the song. As someone called Bryant McGill (or Maya Angelou, depending where you get your quotes from) once said, “rejection is merely redirection.”
I’ve been asked the question, “How do you know if your writing is good?” quite a few times, and I have definitely asked it myself. There’s no simple answer - there are objective things to be done to improve your craft - avoiding clichés, building tension etc. (On a practical note - this book is both helpful and funny). But actually I think what people often mean when they ask this is “Will anyone read my writing?” The answer to this is always yes. Walk into any bookshop and look around at the abundance of books on the shelves, and the many, many readers they reach. Unless you are some sort of literary genius who has invented a never before seen genre (in which case, get off my blog) your writing can be found mirrored somewhere in those shelves. That is not to say that you are copying other books! Rather, that the path you are on is well-trodden and safe, and most importantly, it will get you and your work where you want to go. There is always an audience - and you have a homemade litmus test already: yourself. As one of the most powerful storytellers of the 20th century, Toni Morrison, said, “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
A few more practical points: if you’re feeling hesitant, take a writing course. There are many that are pretty accessible, both financially and geographically, and they can be the reset you need - or spark some new ideas. If you’re feeling lost, read the books of the authors you would love to be one day. Not to copy them, to learn from them and, yes maybe emulate them as you slowly develop your own style. I’ve heard this takes a while. I’m still learning mine. If you’re feeling hopeless, seek out your community/a community of writers and creatives. They will help. And if you are feeling stuck, broaden your literary taste - magazines, poetry, fan-fic, graphic novels, whatever it is that allows you temporary leave of this world, sucking you into its own.
If you are wondering, what now? Consider the possibility of redirection. Maybe your writing isn’t quite ready, and you might have an inkling of what needs to be worked on - there is your redirection. Or maybe, you know it’s ready, but perhaps you haven’t found the right people to put it in front of - there is your redirection. Maybe you were writing a story that you thought could get you a foot in the door, but isn’t actually the story you really want to write, and the embers of something else are stirring - there, once again, is your redirection. Ultimately your writing cannot please everyone. ‘Good’ is subjective, as is ‘bad’, as The Very Bad Place/also known as Goodreads, will tell you. We are fortunate enough to have an abundance of taste, opinions, preferences and desires when it comes to what we read. Your audience is out there, and you will find them.
You can purchase ‘teeth in the back of my neck’ here, and find out more about the Merky Book’s Prize here.
Merky is publishing my short story collection, ‘A Beautiful Lack of Consequence’, in March 2025. You can pre-order it here.
Image courtesy of Penguin Random House/copyright: Dan John Lloyd