As an author, I have to say that the previous month has been by turns rewarding and draining. I wrote an entire novel for NaNoWriMo that I am extremely proud of, but I have also received too many publishing rejections to count. Most of them were innocuous enough, and I quickly moved on. However, I am prone to pinning my hopes on a certain thing: a job that I really want, a vacation that I want to be amazing, or a book that I really feel needs to reach a wider audience. As such, I had entirely too much emotion invested in a novel that received a crushing rejection. This rejection did not come in the form of a brief missive, however. It was a lengthy, detailed email of several paragraphs, spelling out in comprehensive terms why this book was not only unacceptable for their line but also focusing on flaws in my story and its execution. I will be honest and tell you that I did not read the entire email. The breadth and scale of the rejection was more than I could take, and I decided to move onto the very next thing: an email from a friend, letting me know that she was enjoying another of my novels, and that I was a very good writer. It’s funny and interesting in hindsight that these two messages were received in the same batch. It was almost as though some power greater than me knew that I needed encouragement and positive feedback in the wake of something negative and discouraging. At any rate, I am editing two novels and readying another for publication, so hopefully my audience will stick by me—and hopefully I will be able to stand by my writing.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Round About Way
In the past I have complained about being rejected
from both jobs and publishers and receiving either a form letter response, or
none at all. I will never do that again.
As an author, I have to say that the previous month has been by turns rewarding and draining. I wrote an entire novel for NaNoWriMo that I am extremely proud of, but I have also received too many publishing rejections to count. Most of them were innocuous enough, and I quickly moved on. However, I am prone to pinning my hopes on a certain thing: a job that I really want, a vacation that I want to be amazing, or a book that I really feel needs to reach a wider audience. As such, I had entirely too much emotion invested in a novel that received a crushing rejection. This rejection did not come in the form of a brief missive, however. It was a lengthy, detailed email of several paragraphs, spelling out in comprehensive terms why this book was not only unacceptable for their line but also focusing on flaws in my story and its execution. I will be honest and tell you that I did not read the entire email. The breadth and scale of the rejection was more than I could take, and I decided to move onto the very next thing: an email from a friend, letting me know that she was enjoying another of my novels, and that I was a very good writer. It’s funny and interesting in hindsight that these two messages were received in the same batch. It was almost as though some power greater than me knew that I needed encouragement and positive feedback in the wake of something negative and discouraging. At any rate, I am editing two novels and readying another for publication, so hopefully my audience will stick by me—and hopefully I will be able to stand by my writing.
As an author, I have to say that the previous month has been by turns rewarding and draining. I wrote an entire novel for NaNoWriMo that I am extremely proud of, but I have also received too many publishing rejections to count. Most of them were innocuous enough, and I quickly moved on. However, I am prone to pinning my hopes on a certain thing: a job that I really want, a vacation that I want to be amazing, or a book that I really feel needs to reach a wider audience. As such, I had entirely too much emotion invested in a novel that received a crushing rejection. This rejection did not come in the form of a brief missive, however. It was a lengthy, detailed email of several paragraphs, spelling out in comprehensive terms why this book was not only unacceptable for their line but also focusing on flaws in my story and its execution. I will be honest and tell you that I did not read the entire email. The breadth and scale of the rejection was more than I could take, and I decided to move onto the very next thing: an email from a friend, letting me know that she was enjoying another of my novels, and that I was a very good writer. It’s funny and interesting in hindsight that these two messages were received in the same batch. It was almost as though some power greater than me knew that I needed encouragement and positive feedback in the wake of something negative and discouraging. At any rate, I am editing two novels and readying another for publication, so hopefully my audience will stick by me—and hopefully I will be able to stand by my writing.
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