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I haven't been rejected in the writing world (lately anyway. Oh, I've been rejected lots and lots and lots, believe me. Just not lately) but I've been feeling rejected with other things the past couple of weeks and it's been bumming me out. Then I came across this randomly old article by Frances Lefkowitz in a magazine in my bathroom, Body + Soul, October 2009 issue (yep, my bathroom magazines need some refreshing) and it got me thinking. It was about how times are hard for a lot of people and how you can basically drown in your sorrow and mourning and just walk around feeling rotten or you can adapt and move on to better things. She said, "Successfully adapting to adversity means moving, when the time is right, from mourning and regretting to focusing on the options and opportunities before us." She goes on to talk about how going through these hard things/times etc. allow us to open up to new wonderful things, new possibilities, things we may not have thought of before. You can get new strength, new appreciation, better relationships and so on and so on. I won't spill it all in case you want to get a hold of an October 2009 issue of Body + Soul too. :-) Anyway, this all made me think about writing and the rejections we get as writers. It hurts when someone tells you sorry, I can't represent you. Or nope, that book isn't good enough to publish, it'll never make it in the market. Or we can't stock your book in our stores because we don't have confidence it will sell. Sucky sucky things. But if we don't go through these things it wouldn't be half as sweet when we do get that agent, publish that book, and see one of our books in the "big" book store. And it also makes us work harder on future books. I know I'm always trying to make each book better than the last and I'm sure most authors feel the same way. So rejection isn't really a bad thing, we can take it, cry for just a short minute or two, and then learn from it, grow from it, and do bigger and better next time.
Kristina, Miss See Me on the Shelves
4 comments:
That is so true. I don't want my WIP to suffer from rejectionitis so yeah, I am working hard to make it even better than the last 7 I wrote, lol!
There was a line in the movie A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN that was, "The hard is what makes it great."
I think of that line constantly, because it's so true, especially in this industry we're in.
I love that line, Lisa. I love that movie. I think I'm in a mourning period now but I know despite myself, I will move to a place where I can see opportunity again.
I love that movie. Showed it at the library last year. "There's no crying in writing!"
But for real, the hard is what makes the good that much more manic -- I mean great.
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