Feeling rejected . . .

After a few years of practice and a good few dozen rejection slips, I began to write more for children. Not because it's easier, or I thought it would be easier to get published. It's not. Unexpectedly though, my first attempt was picked up by Barefoot before I'd collected too many rejection letters.

That was it. Now the floodgates would open and I would get an agent and be free to publish whatever I wrote. Err . . . actually no. That didn't happen. True I have managed two new contracts since then, but finding an agent still seems almost impossible. The old chestnut of it being more difficult to get an agent than get published certainly rings true with me. In fact, I think I might give up trying . . . I've wasted a lot of time and paper and energy in research and submissions and although they do more often than not ask for the full manuscript these days, I'm still no nearer. I can't afford £300 to have a manuscript edited by a consultancy each time, either. Neither can most writers, so stop putting it on your form letters.

So, how does a writer deal with rejection? Well, first off I would suggest that anyone who writes for money would be better off getting a proper job ( not that there are many around at the moment). Writing is just something I've always done. I remember turning up to school early one summer morning just to finish my first chaptered story in junior school (Mr Hanson, thank you very much). If people told me my stories were awful I'd still do it in secret anyway. So when a publisher or agent rejects a manuscript my heart sinks, like anyone's does, but only for a few minutes. I've even had an agent say she loved one of my stories but couldn't see a place for it in the market. Another wanted me to rewrite a young adult novel more ''like Cornelia Funke''. Well, we live in thrall to the market now, don't we? Demand dictates supply, apparently, not the other way round. But I won't write about vampires or wizards (no offence to anybody who does - it's a personal thing).

If you feel destroyed by each rejection, you'll soon stop writing ( or at least submitting). I comfort myself with the thought that many more eminent writers from the past would never be published today because nobody would take the risk.

So just write. Send it off if you think it's good. Let people read it and offer you an opinion, especially people whose judgment you trust. But most of all, do it because you like doing it.