Another rejection today, with comments that clearly showed the editor had read the story. It was the same guy or the same publication who did the same last time.
It’s hard to feel good about rejection. I know, I KNOW that persistence is 90% of success in this game. I know I’m happier as an unpublished writer than a failed social worker or even back before the dawn of time when I was still an on-track social worker. I know that trying and failing puts me in with all the writers who I count as heroes, who had to try and fail and try again a hundred times before they started making progress.
It’s just hard not to see rejection as… rejection. Not good enough. Nothing special. Wasting my time, wasting the time of the poor editors forced to read my story alongside a hundred or a thousand other hopeful selfish grasping writers wanting their name, their story, their idea to be the one that finally attracts attention.
Intriguing setting, but the story never caught fire for me. So goes my hanging city, and on to the next editor who likely will not be so kind as to give me even that much of a comment.
I want my ideas to echo through the collective consciousness. I want money, damnit, and respect and pity. Not self pity, I’ve got plenty of that already, thank you.
I want to be Vonnegut. I want to be Douglas Adams or Isaac Asimov or Charles Dickens. I want to be Homer but all I am is just one more Odysseus.
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Vanessa,
Some people choose careers where employment and money are virtually guaranteed…physicians, actuaries, nurses, patent lawyers.
You chose the arts. And you know that the arts require a really thick skin. Unfortunately, success and money in the arts do not define talent. I have a nephew who had a full scholarship to the IU School of music, who plays 6 instruments and was composing music at four. Nutty talented. But Lady Gaga has the hits right now.
You know the drill. You might have to have another vocation to sustain you while you pursue the mastery of your craft and the passion of your life. But for some reason, this is the passion that God gave you.
Do NOT take this personally. Be strong.
Comment by debrockman August 4, 2009 @ 1:59 pmi COMPLETELY understand. any sort of criticism throws me into the spiral of inadequacy.
you’re not alone in this
Comment by karnii August 19, 2009 @ 2:40 pm“I want to be Vonnegut. I want to be Douglas Adams or Isaac Asimov or Charles Dickens. I want to be Homer but all I am is just one more Odysseus.”
Comment by Flipowitz August 21, 2009 @ 7:22 pmHey, Odysseus isn’t too bad a person to be, if you had to be someone other than yourself; but why would you want to be KV when you could be yourself? He is dead, afterall, and wasn’t all that happy when he was alive, neither was Dickens. If you want to be somebody, be yourself!
(Having said that, I should admit that this is advice from a failed writer–at least Alexander the Great hasn’t ruined fiction for you…yet.)