Friday

Rejection! Rejection! Rejection!

Say you spent many hours developing a query, you forward it to an editor, and that editor is interested in seeing the manuscript. You, hoping for publication state in the query that you're doing the work "on spec", meaning that you'll submit a complete first draft without payment, until the editor agrees to liking the first draft.

But it's not a small article, it's a big one, running, say, 5,000 words, and, it involves lots of research. So you spend over 2,000 hours excitedly pulling together words, deleting words, shifting paragraphs, you submit to said editor.

A week goes by, the editor says, "Not for us." What would you do next?

This happened to me quite recently, and it stirs me to work harder, submit more. I smile. Because I know that the next editor I query the piece to may decide differently. I'll tweak the manuscript, but the great news is, it's a full blown work ready and waiting in the wings.

Perhaps this is one thing that I truly have in my favor, as a writer. Reject? Motivation!

My mother remained comfortably married to my dad for over 60 years, but she always used to tell me, "Don't cry over him, men are like buses, one comes along every ten minutes."

You think that's how I adopted this killer great rejection attitude? All I know is that today, I'm grateful it's mine.

Lucky
Cull

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