Ah, rejection. You bitch. I loathe thee, even as I’ve learned to be more tolerant of your existence. It took me damn long enough, but I still feel your claws tearing at my heart when you come bouncing into the room, all smiles and giggles, tugging at my clothing as you lean close to breath your nasty words in my ears. “I wish you the very best, but I’ll pass. Thanks!” Ouch! You loathsome fiend!
Seriously, it could be worse, right? First world problems and all that…
In order to work through my issues with denial and rejection, I’ve started a new folder called “REJECTIONS.” I look forward to collecting a large, large, fuck ton of them so that later, when I’m finally publishing regularly and doing the work I love I can turn back to them and smile at how stupid it is to get upset that your first attempt to write a novel hit a brick wall so often. Hey, it was your first attempt, dummy! Folks liked it, but maybe it wasn’t really publishable! You still need to practice, to learn, to get better.
Denial was two-fold yesterday when I posted a brief excerpt from the “Three Old Adventurers” story I’m working on and received some not great comments. Not only did I leave a stupid typo in it I hadn’t noticed – my fingers have a tendency to type a word my mind wasn’t actually thinking, so instead of “knave” they typed “naive”, which I had missed in my read throughs – but the dialect I’m using (for comic effect to be clear) still needs some work. Lesson learned… and so I turned to the internet for better examples of a fake Scottish dialect. Ah, internet, you are my bitch. I found a wonderful site that translates plain English into Scottish phrasing, and I’ll use that for the character who has mush mouth. What irked me most was getting downvoted for the thread. Seriously? It’s an attempt at comic fantasy, and it really wasn’t terribly bad… I mean, I’ve read some serious crap in that forum that got a ton of upvotes.
Which then leads me to the truth: write what you love, and understand you might not sell it. Which is what I intend to do. Rejection be damned… give me an ejection seat any day of the week, it’s a better ride. I do look forward to filling up that folder, though….