LauraJUnderwood
Silly Author Person
Four Rejections In A Row have not exactly put me in a good mood. In fact, they have played "old hairy" with my ego and given IMPoster a lot of fuel for pestering me.
This is not good, of course. IMPoster has a habit of making me think that maybe I should be a plumber and forget this writing stuff...
But I cannot stop. Never give up. Never surrender. It's too much a part of my psyche. It's what makes me what I am and keeps me alive and kicking.
An "avocation" as a fellow journalist once said. You may not make a living at it, but you're serious enough to practice it over and over...
But some days it just doesn't want to work for me that way. The rejections are a part of the cycle of being a writer. You get them. Even when you have sold as much as I have, you get them (well, okay if your name is Stephen King or Nora Roberts, I am certain you could sell your grocery list and no one would say no, but that's a whole 'nuther can of beans, okay-I am not A Big Name so for me and the millions of others like me, rejection is still part of the process--learn to live with it...)
My problem is that I missed an opportunity to try writing a story for an invitation only anthology (yes, I was invited) that I know I could have gotten into, and instead, I concentrated on other things, including one story I was certain would sell to the market I sent it to, but I think the editor still has a beef with me over knocking them out of a spot in another anthology years ago--yes, in spite of their closeness to the editor of that older anthology, I got a spot and they didn't and their revenge was to make sure I was not on panels at a certain convention years ago (and no I will not go into more detail), since I got a polite but clearly a FORM rejection from them.
Elsewhere on the the web, I heard someone saying they got a "nice" rejection from the same editor and as soon as they said what the rejection said, I shook my head--that's not personal, that's a form rejection--but I didn't tell them because I didn't want to burst their bubble.
So I go off and grump and grouse and gripe for a few days, trying to sort it all out in my head, kicking myself for not doing what I should have done and make efforts in what clearly would have been an easy sale for me.
Now I will take the story in question and send it elsewhere. Because that is ALSO part of the process, the healing part as it were. It's like falling off a horse. You get up and get back on it and ride it in spite of not liking to fall.
For me, the mental scourging is due to the fact that lately I feel like I am watching my career as an author slide down a tube into toilet land. And in spite of all the evidence I have pointing otherwise (new stories out this year, a new novella out this year, a novel due out next year) there is that obscessiveness that seizes me. I feel like I must be selling something regularly or I am wasting my time.
And therein lies the danger to my own state of mind. If I become convinced that I am wasting time, I stop doing the thing I think IS wasting my time--the writing, and then I become agitated and impossible to be around...
I have only just wandered back out on the web in the last 24 hours, still licking the wounds of my ego.
But I am also working on getting a sampler together that I will be offering as a free download off Lulu.com here soon, and I am editing an older novel, and rewriting another, and looking at a novella with the intention of getting it cleaned up and on its way.
So in spite of my ego bruising, I am still the writer writing.
And griping.
Which is also normal...
Really...
This is not good, of course. IMPoster has a habit of making me think that maybe I should be a plumber and forget this writing stuff...
But I cannot stop. Never give up. Never surrender. It's too much a part of my psyche. It's what makes me what I am and keeps me alive and kicking.
An "avocation" as a fellow journalist once said. You may not make a living at it, but you're serious enough to practice it over and over...
But some days it just doesn't want to work for me that way. The rejections are a part of the cycle of being a writer. You get them. Even when you have sold as much as I have, you get them (well, okay if your name is Stephen King or Nora Roberts, I am certain you could sell your grocery list and no one would say no, but that's a whole 'nuther can of beans, okay-I am not A Big Name so for me and the millions of others like me, rejection is still part of the process--learn to live with it...)
My problem is that I missed an opportunity to try writing a story for an invitation only anthology (yes, I was invited) that I know I could have gotten into, and instead, I concentrated on other things, including one story I was certain would sell to the market I sent it to, but I think the editor still has a beef with me over knocking them out of a spot in another anthology years ago--yes, in spite of their closeness to the editor of that older anthology, I got a spot and they didn't and their revenge was to make sure I was not on panels at a certain convention years ago (and no I will not go into more detail), since I got a polite but clearly a FORM rejection from them.
Elsewhere on the the web, I heard someone saying they got a "nice" rejection from the same editor and as soon as they said what the rejection said, I shook my head--that's not personal, that's a form rejection--but I didn't tell them because I didn't want to burst their bubble.
So I go off and grump and grouse and gripe for a few days, trying to sort it all out in my head, kicking myself for not doing what I should have done and make efforts in what clearly would have been an easy sale for me.
Now I will take the story in question and send it elsewhere. Because that is ALSO part of the process, the healing part as it were. It's like falling off a horse. You get up and get back on it and ride it in spite of not liking to fall.
For me, the mental scourging is due to the fact that lately I feel like I am watching my career as an author slide down a tube into toilet land. And in spite of all the evidence I have pointing otherwise (new stories out this year, a new novella out this year, a novel due out next year) there is that obscessiveness that seizes me. I feel like I must be selling something regularly or I am wasting my time.
And therein lies the danger to my own state of mind. If I become convinced that I am wasting time, I stop doing the thing I think IS wasting my time--the writing, and then I become agitated and impossible to be around...
I have only just wandered back out on the web in the last 24 hours, still licking the wounds of my ego.
But I am also working on getting a sampler together that I will be offering as a free download off Lulu.com here soon, and I am editing an older novel, and rewriting another, and looking at a novella with the intention of getting it cleaned up and on its way.
So in spite of my ego bruising, I am still the writer writing.
And griping.
Which is also normal...
Really...
