I'm getting better at handling rejections- some still hurt more than others, but for the most part they are all a learning experience. At some point I was vaguely thinking there must be a magic number of times you can submit something before it becomes impossible ignore the fact that it's crap, even if you still can't see it. I never really got around to deciding what this number is, or if it even exists; I retired many things myself, especially in my first year or so of submitting because my learning curve was steep. (You know what I mean, perhaps? That "thank BOB nobody ever accepted this!" story?)
The ones I stuck with have either been accepted somewhere (yay!) or had enough positive comments that I knew they were worth subbing. Except for this one story. It has been held rather long in some places, read by more than one reader in some places, but, in the end, always returned without comment.
And I've submitted it more than any other story. Hmmmm.... What's a writer to do? Perhaps it's time for a cooling off- I'll shelve it for a half year or so and then look if it's really any good.
So what about you, fellow bloglodytes? You ever have story you really thought was good that no one wanted to touch?
2 comments:
I'm only an occasional writer and there isn't much I've written that I thought was good - just a couple of flash fiction pieces, one of 100 words and one of less than 10! (Both won small online competitions.)
Oh, and an entry for the Clarity of Night wasn't awful.
These are all very short - perhaps that's my natural length!
I don't know what the answer to this is. I wrote off a story after 12 rejections and had someone else tell me I was weak and foolish. He showed me his story that got pro-published after 24 rejections. I'm not sure I could find that many pro markets.
The easier response (well, for me) is to give the story away after a few rejections and then I can feel good about it. Except that deep down, I still wonder.
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