“To err is human, to forgive is divine.”

It’s hardly breaking news that writers make mistakes — a lot of them. You’ll probably find some in here (I’m OK with you not pointing them out to me though). We are only human after all. Just because writing is our job, or, at the very least, our passion, doesn’t mean we are going to get it right all the time. Just as footballers sometimes miss really easy goals or singers hit a bum note, or the government makes a decision that sees our country plummet to almost farcical levels of disorder, writers can misplace a comma, go off on a tangent or even write a whole book that’s not very good.

The problem for writers is that forgiveness is often hard to come by. Our readers expect perfection. Even if you’ve tried your best, and worked as hard as you can, and edited until the cows came home and grew up and had tiny baby cows all of their own you could still make a mistake. If you misspell a word, overlook an inconsistency or haven’t quite made your story as good as it could be, your readers will let you know about it.

Of course, there is nothing quite like the brutal wrath of a writer upon themselves when they realise they’ve made a mistake, especially if it’s too late to change it. Even during the writing process, we can be particularly inventive in our self-torture. If you’ve ever spent so much time agonising over synonyms that you start to question whether you might have gone mad and perhaps only ‘think’ you are typing on your computer but are, in reality, sitting in a padded cell somewhere just mashing a banana into the floor, you’ll know what I mean.

So how can we learn to forgive our mistakes and perhaps encourage our readers to do the same?

Common writer mistakes

Striving for perfection

Tying to make your writing perfect is pointless. An editor friend once told me “editors write books.” What she meant (though vaguely insulting) was that any book that’s been through a traditional publisher would have been changed so much by the editor that they might as well have just written it themselves in the first place (OK, perhaps a lot insulting). While I would argue with this, there is at least some truth to it. No manuscript that’s ever been sent to a publisher is published as is. They aren’t going to think much of a book that’s riddled with errors. However,  if you’ve written a clunky paragraph, made an egg-on-your-face grammatical faux pax or even spelt one of your own characters names wrong (why did I think it was a good idea to name my protagonist Azariah Cholomondley?), they’ll be OK with it – if what you’ve presented them with is a riveting tale full of compelling characters that’s well-written to boot.

Not taking your time

Sometimes we writers can be in somewhat of a rush. We’re sort of like the tortoise in ‘the tortoise and the hare’, we’re racing, but also getting nowhere, quite slowly. It can, therefore, be difficult not to become rather impatient when one finishes one’s novel.

It takes a long time to write a book, so when we finally type THE END, (as all good novels end), trying not to send our manuscript off to every publisher we might think could publish it, or whacking it up on Amazon and shouting about it to the world takes a fair bit of restraint. It’s somewhat contradictory – we can’t quite make up our minds whether we are perfectionists who would rather let our hard work gather dust as we um and ah over every word, or we are reckless and impulsive chancers who just think ‘to hell with it’ and throw our hats in the ring and see what happens. The problem of course, with either, is that you are doing yourself a disservice. Writers should take their time to edit their books and make sure they are in as good a shape as they can be – not perfect, but edited, reworked, checked, edited and rechecked – that ought to do it! Knowing when to hang on is as important as knowing when to let go, after all.

Being too hard on yourself

I’ve said it time and time again, but writers really need to give themselves a break, for their own and everyone else’s sake. Constantly being down on your writing is the equivalent of asking ‘does my bum look big in this?’ every 5 seconds to your coworkers who don’t want to look at your bum, nor do they care either way. Having confidence in your writing is the biggest favour you can do for yourself. It really doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. If you are going to do it, choosing to believe the former will make it a far more positive and productive experience for you. If you really can’t stop being negative about your writing, maybe you should ask yourself why you continue to struggle with something that doesn’t bring you that much enjoyment in life?

Not learning from your writing mistakes

No mistakes are as big as the ones we don’t learn from. Instead of wallowing in self-pity or shame, or fluttering nervously around your readers in obsequious self-deprecation trying to explain your mistakes before they’ve even had a chance to notice them, just acknowledge them, think ‘whoopsy’ and then figure out the steps you need to take to make sure you don’t do it again.

We’ve got to accept that while it is frustrating when we make mistakes it also probably doesn’t matter almost half as much as we think it does. Of course, it’s annoying if you are two-thirds of the way through your book and you realise that you’ve made a mistake which the whole plot sorta kinda relies upon. Of course, it’s hide-your-face-in-a-pillowcase-and-weep kind of cringey when you realise your self-published novel has an elementary spelling mistake on the first page. Being a conscientious writer, being thorough, doing proper research,  re-reading, and hiring an editor can help avoid any grave errors from slipping through the net when you go to publish, but there are no guarantees, and while it is possible to get your manuscript error-free, it is impossible to make it flawless. So embrace your writing mistakes, be kind to yourself, learn from them and move on – you’ll end up a better writer if you do.

Bethany Cadman is a freelance writer and author of Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers

Receiving rejections is part and parcel of any writer’s life. You know the old saying, if you haven’t been rejected, you can’t call yourself a real writer. Just like you’ll never know pain until you’ve gone through childbirth/been kicked in the nuts. Or, you’ll never understand what hard work is like unless you’ve been down the mines, gone to war, or stood for 12 hours weighing raw fish on a factory line while listening to the same Christmas mixtape on repeat for the entire duration (true story).

Rejection is a rite of passage, so much so that we are almost taught to celebrate it. Wear it like a badge of honour. Yes, apparently I should be happy that someone told me that my book wasn’t publishable in an impersonal (dear writer) one line email that does not explain as to why the project I’ve poured my heart and soul into for the past year and a half is not worth reading. That’s wonderful! Thanks for letting me know in the coldest, most brutal way ever.

Rejection is ‘subjective.’

We cheer ourselves up with tales of how Harry Potter got rejected 800 billion times, or how a publisher told Ernest Hemingway that his efforts were “both tedious and offensive.” We revel in the fact that quite a lot of people think 50 Shades of Grey is a giant bag of garbage, and yet who’s sitting on a big pile of cash feeling probably a bit smug? Not them. We remind ourselves that writing is subjective, that it’s only one person’s opinion. We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that just because this one person doesn’t like it, doesn’t mean that someone who is more aligned with our sensibilities and has a much better nose for true talent won’t find our work the charming, engaging, entertaining piece of magic that it so obviously is.

But isn’t it time we were brutally honest with ourselves? More often than not if we get rejected it isn’t because the book wasn’t ‘quite right for their list’ it’s because the book wasn’t good enough. Editors and agents have one job, and that’s to spot a brilliant piece of writing, a story that will sell. OK, they might have their preferences, but if you’ve written something incredible, they aren’t going to reject it outright just because it might be a little different to the titles they usually publish.

I received what might be considered a ‘positive’ rejection the other day. A publisher had kindly taken the time to tell me that they very much ‘enjoyed’ reading my manuscript, that they thought it was ‘engaging’ and ‘well-written.’ At first, I was delirious, over the moon. I told anyone who would listen (such is the life of an attention-starved writer where even a slight compliment is something I’ll print out and frame like I’ve won some sort of important award). But then, the more I thought about it I realised it didn’t make any difference. I asked my fellow writers what they thought, some said I should be encouraged, others said it was probably still a generic response, in the end, we all agreed, it didn’t matter. The outcome was still the same, and my story wouldn’t be hitting the bookshelves any time soon.

The fact of the matter is, I want them to be brutal. I’d prefer it. It would be far more helpful if an agent thought my manuscript was a pile of old drivel to actually say that, use those exact words, tear me down, laugh at me if they must, but at least then I’d know the truth.

How helpful would it be if terrible writers were told how awful they were? For a start if you were a good one it means that you’d eliminate half the competition, agents and publishers would have more time to consider your work carefully, and perhaps be more willing to take a punt on an unknown author. If you decided to self-publish, your book would be more visible. Readers also may be more willing to trust that it was worth risking the devastating sum of $1.99 for the Kindle edition. This is because they wouldn’t have ever suffered the disappointment of doing so only to be faced with a story so terrible, so poorly written, so offensively boring that they wished they’d bought the paper copy so at least they could have used the pages as emergency loo roll.

Imagine if we were treated like contestants on the X factor. We’d nervously have to read out our work to a panel of literary experts, a live audience sitting behind them who’d just as much love us to be talented as to see our dreams crushed in as vicious and unsparing a way as possible. As the lights dim, we begin to read, falteringly at first, but then we find our feet, our confidence soaring, mum was right, we are amazing! We carry on, the ebb and flow of our lyrical voice filling the auditorium with our carefully crafted words, we’d be so carried away, so into it that…we don’t hear the boos. We see one of the judges, hand in the air to silence us, the other two hiding their faces behind their cue cards, sniggering. We stop. Then they let rip while the audience laughs and boos some more. Our hearts break, perhaps we shout an obscenity, then mic drop, and we’re out, never to write again.

Dealing with rejection – honesty is the best policy

Seriously though, if you are not good at writing wouldn’t you rather just know? I’ve got loads of other things I could be doing with my time, things that, you know, might actually make some money or could mean I spend more time with my family and friends in the sunshine rather than hunched over a desk refusing to speak to anyone until the sun goes down like some sort of cantankerous vampire?

Of course, this is never going to happen. Agents and publishers don’t have the time to give you actual feedback, nor the inclination to tell you to give up. Until they do, the problem with trying to become a published author is that there is always a chance. There is always the carrot dangling, just out of reach, but still ever present, above our heads. With any other job, there is usually a point where you’d say ‘enough is enough.’ If you’ve applied to be an [insert job title here] ten times and never even got an interview, you might think about switching up your career ambitions. With writing, however, it is possible to be rejected 800 billion times, just like Harry Potter was, and then go on to become about 800 billion times richer than any other author just like J.K. Rowling is. If you do get rejected over and over again, you can still self-publish, and it might even be considered by most to be a big bag of garbage, yet you can still make a fortune, entertain and delight people and basically feel pretty pleased with yourself.

So, perhaps, when it comes to rejection, it is time we stopped romanticising it, but also time we stopped paying much attention to it at all. After all, it is what it is, the result is still the same, and all we can do is try, try again.

Bethany Cadman is a freelance writer and author of Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers