This week has been about recalibration for me. One writing project is on hiatus while the beta-readers savage it. I’m looking forward to their criticisms more than their praise – harsh reviews have always motivated my spirit of competition, and the work ultimately merits the best I can do.
I’m pushing through a major middle-of-the-book blockage on another novel project. And I sent one short story to another well-paying market, a day after getting a form reject from one of the big venues in short SFF.
Many writers call those ‘revenge queries’.
Twenty years ago, rejection letters made me seethe internally, and often vent aloud. (The Internet remembers my outbursts, alas.) Now, I’m more likely to say ‘Meh, whatever’, do some research on other markets, and get the story back out again ASAP. Or trunk it for further revisions, until I think I can get it right.
Rejection is never ‘easy’, in that it will always sting a bit (Whaddata mean, it wasn’t good enough?)
But it’s ultimately easier to accept that stories get rejected for a million and one reasons, and that’s that. It shouldn’t be an ego thing. There are other markets, other doorways through an apparent wall.
These days, I have a mental file marked ‘self-pub’, for all the stuff I’m fairly certain will never get sold to a worthwhile commercial market. Just having that long-term possible outlet has helped. It transforms my trunk-of-story-doom into a stage, not an ending.