Yesterday I received a rejection letter from a publishing house that still sends them out. Did I like it? Hell no. Did it devastate me? Of course not.
My disappointment was that they didn’t ask for the full manuscript. The house had been open to unsolicited pieces for a few weeks in January, and asked for synopses and the first few chapters. I powered through and wrote a 7000 word MG piece. I had thought that the work had been enticing enough for them to at least consider the full. I was wrong.
So now the choice I face is: give up or toughen up.
I choose to go on. I choose to revise the piece, and select another publishing house it may be suitable for.
Put it this way: every week, millions of people play the lottery. Some spend more than they can afford on the hope of striking it rich. They know the odds are crap, but the chance is there.
I figure that even if the odds of my work getting selected are poor, they’re still higher than scoring the jackpot. And I can tip the odds in my favour by choosing to improve my work. And the only way to do that is by toughening up and not letting the disappointment of rejection get to me.
In fact, I wrote about a thousand words last night. I lifted my target from 500 words per day to 1000.
Go on, keep sending them rejection letters. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.
A thousnd word per day - good luck. I'd be lucky to do a thousand per week. You have raised the bar.
ReplyDeleteGo you!!!
ReplyDeleteThe trick is to have many queries out at once so that no one rejection stings overly much. Of course, all the publishers asking for exclusives makes that strategy tough to follow at times...
Thank you for the mention on your sidebar *blush*
Best of luck on your word count goal. If you've got that fire in your belly it won't be hard to achieve at all!
I'll let you know how tha word target's going!
ReplyDeleteI could probably wallpaper my house with all the rejection letters I've received. I have an agent and still I'm rejected...all the time. She just sees the rejections instead of me! I guess it just takes finding that write person at the right time...so of course that means lots of doors being slammed in our faces until then.
ReplyDeleteGood to see you're not taking them personally, Steph. And I thnk it's great that you've scored an agent - you're a few steps closer to the goal of submitting the right story at the right time than most of us!
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that. I'm sure you'll get that request for the full soon.
ReplyDeleteIf I do, I'll be delighted. If not, well... I've got a few stories in me yet.
ReplyDelete