FEBRUARY, 2019
BIRD ON THE SHOULDER—WHY DO I DO IT?
By: Alice Orr
Every writer I know
has endured rejection.
If you‟ve escaped that
fate, you should be
writing this, because
my work has been
rejected many times.
On the occasion of
my first major rejection, the editor im-
plied, or maybe told me straight out, I
had no idea what I was doing.
My big mistake was agreeing to a
sushi lunch. I didn‟t know sushi from
tsunami but, to appear cooperative, I
replied, “Sure. Sushi‟s good.” Had I un-
derstood the purpose of the lunch, I‟d
have made a different response. I didn‟t
have a clue, though I probably should
have.
I was writing my second novel for
this editor. The first didn‟t set the world
afire. The second had dragged through
two extensive revisions, and I‟d pretty
much lost track of what the story was
originally about. As I took a wobbly
chopstick grip on my third portion of
something raw wrapped in seaweed, my
editor let me know she felt the same.
“This just doesn‟t work for us,” she
said. I plunged into shock, but I was also
suddenly no longer clueless. I was stone-
19
cold certain. There would be no more
revision chances. Novel #2 had gone
down the plumbing and months of my
work along with it. The sushi slipped
from its precarious perch between my
chopsticks and plummeted to the edge of
my plate.
“You seem to think a little bird sits
on your shoulder and tells you how to
write,” my editor was saying. “Like you
don‟t have anything to do with it.” I
couldn‟t respond. I excused myself,
dashed to that upscale restaurant‟s up-
scale ladies‟ room, and leaned my clammy
forehead against the cool tiles of the
black marble stall, struggling to keep my
insides under control.
Bird on my shoulder? What was she
talking about? I‟d never been aware of
anything, with or without feathers, telling
me how to write a book. What I had al-
ways been aware of was my helplessness.
Because of the way the publishing world
works, I had no control over the destiny
of my writing career. Now, I understood
how perilous cluelessness can be.
If you‟ve ever submitted a manu-
script, you know what I mean. You labor
over your work, send it out into what
feels like a void. then wait for a thumbs
up or down on your efforts, your ambi-
tions, your hope. You endure this be-
cause you have no idea what else you can
do. You are as clueless as I was in that
ladies‟ room with my forehead pressed
against tile as black as I believed my fu-
ture to be.
A couple of years later, I became an
editor myself. That choice had a lot to do
with power. I was determined to regain
mine, and to share it. As an editor, then a
literary agent and teacher, I would be that
bird. I‟d sit on a writer‟s shoulder and
whisper in her ear the words she needed
to hear to avoid demoralizing rejection
scenes of her own. I could do that be-
cause my years on the other side of the
desk taught me a lot about creating pub-
lishable fiction.
Now I write articles and blog posts
to share that knowledge. Still, the dread
words are out there, “This just doesn‟t
work for us.” Words that hit their mark
hard for any writer. I wish I could guar-
antee they will never be heard again, but I
can‟t. What I can offer is my experience
and expertise, and to be a bird on the
shoulder with an empowering song to
sing.
Continued on Page 20.