Skin Deep - A Work In Progress
So I admit, after being rejected on "In the Darkness", I was disappointed. Sure, I understood the reasons it was rejected, even agreed with them, but it was still discouraging. At first I denied being upset about it (after all, I knew it wasn't the kind of writing I was capable of, so why feel bad that the editors at On Spec felt the same way about it that I did, right?), but rejection is rejection. For a couple of months, I found excuses not to write. I was busy, I didn't have any really good ideas, the list of excuses dragged out.
Fear of rejection is among the greatest enemies a prospective writer has to face. Self doubt following rejection comes in a close second, and can sometimes be much harder to overcome. It only takes a moment of courage to drop your story in the mail, and then it's out of your hands... self doubt can catch up to you at any time.
Not writing began to have a toll on me, though. After years of not putting my ideas into words on paper (or on disk, as it were), now that I'd written one story, I wanted to write more. Imagination and creativity are like a river - once they start flowing, it's not such an easy thing to stop them up again. I became irritable, moody, and downright miserable, until my wife finally coaxed out of me the reason (a reason that I had, quite frankly, avoided acknowledging even to myself - in addition to writing, my other "talents" include a phenomenal ability to bottle things up so deep that even I don't know what I'm really feeling at times). Once the truth came out that I really was discouraged by my first rejection letter, however, I was able to move on. I did the only thing any writer can do when they get rejected.
I started writing another story.
Without divulging too much at such an early stage of the process, the new story is entitled "Skin Deep", and is more in keeping with the kind of stories that I like to both read and write. Whether it will fare better than "In the Darkness" remains to be seen, but the point is that I continue to write, and that this time I'm writing the kind of story I want to write. At least if this one gets rejected, it will be on the merits and flaws of my own style, not what I perceive to be popular or desirable to publishers. One thing I've found is that by writing in the manner and style that comes naturally to me, "Skin Deep" flows out of my mind and onto the computer screen, whereas "In the Darkness" tended to come in big sticky globs of text, with large gaps in between when no writing occurred because I had to really think to myself "Where was I going with this, again?"
Writers get rejected. It's a fact of life that many more things will be written than will ever see publication. My advice is this: take the rejection letters, put them in a folder, or a shoe box, or pin them to your bulletin board in your room. Each one of them represents a moment of courage, where you put your creative work out there to face the scutiny and criticism of publishers who no doubt see entire truckloads of manuscripts every year. Take pride in knowing you took the shot... then pick up your pen and paper, dust off the keyboard, and start writing your next story. Try another publisher with the other story, too, while you're at it - each publisher has his or her own criteria, preferences, and interests. What one of them rejects, the other might be eager to put into print.
The bottom line is this: There's always another story to be told... and every story is worth telling, published or not.
Fear of rejection is among the greatest enemies a prospective writer has to face. Self doubt following rejection comes in a close second, and can sometimes be much harder to overcome. It only takes a moment of courage to drop your story in the mail, and then it's out of your hands... self doubt can catch up to you at any time.
Not writing began to have a toll on me, though. After years of not putting my ideas into words on paper (or on disk, as it were), now that I'd written one story, I wanted to write more. Imagination and creativity are like a river - once they start flowing, it's not such an easy thing to stop them up again. I became irritable, moody, and downright miserable, until my wife finally coaxed out of me the reason (a reason that I had, quite frankly, avoided acknowledging even to myself - in addition to writing, my other "talents" include a phenomenal ability to bottle things up so deep that even I don't know what I'm really feeling at times). Once the truth came out that I really was discouraged by my first rejection letter, however, I was able to move on. I did the only thing any writer can do when they get rejected.
I started writing another story.
Without divulging too much at such an early stage of the process, the new story is entitled "Skin Deep", and is more in keeping with the kind of stories that I like to both read and write. Whether it will fare better than "In the Darkness" remains to be seen, but the point is that I continue to write, and that this time I'm writing the kind of story I want to write. At least if this one gets rejected, it will be on the merits and flaws of my own style, not what I perceive to be popular or desirable to publishers. One thing I've found is that by writing in the manner and style that comes naturally to me, "Skin Deep" flows out of my mind and onto the computer screen, whereas "In the Darkness" tended to come in big sticky globs of text, with large gaps in between when no writing occurred because I had to really think to myself "Where was I going with this, again?"
Writers get rejected. It's a fact of life that many more things will be written than will ever see publication. My advice is this: take the rejection letters, put them in a folder, or a shoe box, or pin them to your bulletin board in your room. Each one of them represents a moment of courage, where you put your creative work out there to face the scutiny and criticism of publishers who no doubt see entire truckloads of manuscripts every year. Take pride in knowing you took the shot... then pick up your pen and paper, dust off the keyboard, and start writing your next story. Try another publisher with the other story, too, while you're at it - each publisher has his or her own criteria, preferences, and interests. What one of them rejects, the other might be eager to put into print.
The bottom line is this: There's always another story to be told... and every story is worth telling, published or not.
posted by Shadow-writer at 11:52 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home