Rejection

In the past week I have received two rejections and am still unpublished.  One for an article about my Grandfathers exploits as a prisoner of war in World War 2 and the other a science fiction short story.  This is not a whinge or a moan about being rejected.  I just believe that you shouldn’t just talk about your successes, but also your setbacks.

If I am honest I was a little disappointed the article was rejected, especially after having positive emails from the publication in question.  But as my mother told me, it isn’t the staff member you have to impress but the editor!  The positive thing to come out of this is that I worked with a staff member of a magazine, swapping emails and following the whole process from start to finish.  Before submitting the outline and query letter I had never experienced this and now have the experience to look back on.

The short story though was always going to be a tough ask.  Science fiction is a hard genre to sell, and the market I chose to sell to has a reputation for a very high quality of writing.  Of course the positive side is that at least I can simply submit to another publication; the article would have to be rewritten to fit a particular style for a magazine but at 3000 words I will find plenty of opportunities to submit my short story. 

Finally, I have to remember that all the great writers have been rejected early on in their writing careers.  The great Iain M Banks was rejected a handful of times before finding success – in fact there is an idea he discussed in an interview that you have to write a million words of rubbish before being successful.  So I may have a while to go!

Does “copying and pasting” a word a million times count?