Pick a memory – this can be a childhood one or something that happened just last week – and write it down so that it reads like a headline. Try to select one word that you can repeat throughout the takes. Next, explore your memory as a series of takes by writing as many as ten lines or as few as five. By considering this moment in your life from more than one angle or perspective, you’ll create some depth to your writing.

(Idea from: Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein’s (2008) article, Inventing New Forms: Three Experiments for Teaching Poets)

Wicket from Word Well: important (a word from the title of the rejected manuscript)

WRITER GETS 1,000 REJECTION

Take One:

Email arrives with agent’s name blaring and subject line screaming – Query and Manuscript for ‘The Most Important Things in the World’ by Vanessa Shields.

Take Two:

Too busy. Won’t read now. Working on other things.

Take Three:

It doesn’t matter what it says – your work is important, Vanessa.

Take Four:

Open email. Eyes find: it would be a hard sell in the very competitive picture book market.

Take Five:

Ideas that can change the world are important. Definitely hard to sell.

Take Six:

It’s important to not give up.

Take Seven:

There are plenty of fish (agents) in the sea.

Take Eight:

Self-publishing is also important.

Take Nine:

Rejection is painful.

Take Ten:

Rejection is painfuel. Rejection is painfree. Rejection keeps the words free. Rejection is freedom fuel.