Leaves

I've been working on Masks again.  I have this giddy feeling that comes from visiting favorite places combined with new explorations.

It's a good thing that there is giddiness because I've received a ton of rejections this past week.  Editors must be reacting to the change of seasons and are clearing out all the leaves from their yards.

Speaking of which, most of our trees have all their leaves and only a few have started to turn.  That means I have to wait before I fertilize.  This is, however, oddly, a great time to do a bit of shaping and pruning if you have plants you need to reduce.  They'll go to sleep remembering that they're a smaller plant, and won't go as crazy in spring trying to regain the size you want to bring them down to.  Once the leaves turn and fall, though, the tree is essentially dormant and won't remember a thing except that it used to be X number of feet tall and wide and oh noes!  Must grow all the missing bits back!

Plants are kewl and weird.  Writing is kewl and weird.  Rejections ... best thing for me to do is to sweep them into a pile and send out the manuscripts again.

Adopting Stories

I received a form rejection today. No big deal, and it won't be my last, but it might be my last for 2009. That makes me grin.

We didn't just talk about rejection at the master's class. We went through an exercise that helped put us, briefly, on the other side of the editor's desk. Once I'd been through that I wanted to stand up and shout louder than ever before, "Don't take it personally!" Seriously.

This has been said many different ways. Here's one way I look at it. Plenty of great stories are rejected not because the editor didn't like them, but because they didn't quite fit, or there wasn't enough space for them, or they didn't fill enough space. Think about that. Editors reject stories that they enjoy all the time. Every day. They even reject stories that they love. If they let it hurt too much to let those stories go they'd never survive as editors.

Lately I've been likening it to going to your local humane society to adopt a kitten. There are lots of really lovely kittens, any number of which would be great to take home. There are some wonderful cats there too, and dogs, but you're not shopping for those. They're there anyway, tempting you with those beautiful big eyes and soft faces. You pass them by and look at the kittens, and there are, out of the hundreds, four that you really, really want. You take the one that you think the rest of the family will like too (as an editor picks what they think their audience will enjoy the most.) And you take it home.

Imagine doing this every month. You'd have to learn to quickly let go of the ones that you can't adopt and focus on the ones you do. And you couldn't spend lots of time trying to comfort or say sorry or goodbye to all those other kittens that you won't adopt. It's not just a matter of time expenditure, but emotional energy.

Makes those personal rejections that much more special, doesn't it?

For those who haven't seen it yet, a fun little video that demonstrates how not to respond to rejection:

Dylan Moran (Bernard Black) coping with rejection

I couldn't embed this video because that ability was disabled.

Happy New Year everyone! May you be successful in your endeavors.

Broken, not sprained, and the Rejectophile

I got a call from the girl's doc yesterday.  The radiologist saw something on the film, so she gets to go back this morning for a consult.  I don't think they'll change the splint/ibuprofen thing, but they may talk to her about what it means to have a bone break and how long she'll have to take care of it and how.  She's feeling okay, doesn't seem to have any functionality issues and she's getting around at school, which is the important part as far as I'm concerned.

In writing news, I got a swift rejection from Sword and Sorceress 23.    Sounds like it was mainly a miss by tone, or at least she didn't spend any of her time to mention any other issues.  That's great news as far as I'm concerned.  She also reminded me to keep sending it out.  I'll definitely follow that advice.

I have yet to meet (in email or in a rejection letter, or, come to think of it, face to face) a mean editor.  So, where are the heartless fiends that writers complain about?  I've definitely got to send out more stories.  I suspect that they're a rare or even a dying breed (if they ever existed) and I think I'll make it my goal to find one before they disappear altogether.

So, added to my aim to become a regularly published author and my goal to keep adding to my rejection collection (does that make me a rejectophile?) I'm adding a quest to find a mean editor.  My quest will be especially hard because I'm only going to be submitting to paying markets and focusing on ones that pay professional rates, but I guess every quest has its limitations.  Sometimes when you're looking for Aztec gold you can afford to go to Guatemala but not necessarily Belize or any other central American country.  Also, I won't count any meanness that results from baiting, so I can only submit professional, polite cover letters.

I have a feeling this is going to be a tough quest.