What Rejection Teaches Me

So far, I have five emails with form letter rejections on Sprinter, and one personalized email explaining why it was rejected. At this point, I anticipate the eight I’m waiting on will be rejections, and I’m okay with that.

The obvious lesson is the process. I’m a far cry from Edison’s thousands of attempts to create the incandescent light bulb (he succeeded on his 1,000th or 10,000th attempt depending on the source), or the best-selling authors with hundreds of rejections before their first publication. I’m learning from my mistakes. Though I’m receiving no specifics (except one which did help), I’m receiving excellent and specific feedback from my critique group.

Any writer who sends their query and opening manuscript chapters may feel like me. I’m making an electronic paper airplane that lands in the hands of someone I can’t see and don’t know personally, unless I met them at a conference. They may not like what they see for an infinite number of reasons. They might not be interested in a running story, or an inspirational story, or a story with only 59,000 words. Yes, I check the submission guidelines, but some are not that specific. They might not get past my query, but if they get to the first chapter, I better knock their socks off and have them dying to know more. No one has been dying for more. Yet.

Therefore, I have to plug joining a critique group again. They helped me see why my opening chapter didn’t hook the reader right away. Granted, I had rewritten from their comments on my original opening about four times before submitting to agents and publishers, so I thought I was ready. But hey, my mistake. I should’ve brought my rewrite to the group before submitting. Now that I have, I feel much more prepared to keep submitting and getting those rejections, however many it takes, until an acceptance. Could it take years? Sure. But I love writing, even the process, and I’m in this for life.