I hope some of you were able to visit the Muse Online Writers Conference website. I'm looking forward to the conference. It will be a new experience for me. I want to check it out and see how online conferences may help my career.
With that said, for those of you who aren't aware, Maria Schneider, editor of Writer's Digest Magazine, has a blog. She discusses varying topics, but this morning I was particularly intersted in her subject--rejection. Had to chuckle at some of the responses she received. It seems to be a 'universal truth' that everyone gets rejected. Through the years, rejection has become one of those things to me. Yes, it's there, it happens, but doesn't make me want to stop writing and submitting. I just look at it as one of those occupational hazards--speeding tickets, hair in restaurant food, spaghetti stains on white business shirt, and hitting every green light in town when you leave so you'll have plenty of time to get through the red lights on your way to your doctor's appointment.
Maybe we should have our own bumper sticker which reads, 'Rejection Happens!'. I don't know though. The masses may get the wrong idea, but who knows....
In the meantime, for those lamenting the 51st rejection of your novel, you might want to purchase the book, "Rotten Rejections". When I get low and begin questioning my writing and marketing ability, I pull this slim volume off the shelf and flip through the pages. I always smile at the rejection sent to Anne Frank for "The Diary of Anne Frank", 1952. It read, "The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift the book above the 'curiosity' level." Or, a rejection sent to Zane Grey (1908) for his "The Last of the Plainsmen". His rejection read, "I do not see anything in this to convince ne you can write either narrative or fiction". Ouch!
So chin up. Don't get discouraged. Rejection happens! Be proud it happens to you. It puts you in a special class of writers--working ones.
Til Next Time~