Rejection...a good thing?

We hear it over and over again…writing is a SUBJECTIVE business.

Where else in the world can you receive a rejection and think of it as a “good” thing? I don’t know of any other profession where a rejection is a mark of accomplishment.

How is a rejection a good thing? Well, it simply proves to the world that you are serious enough about your writing to actually submit it to an editor or an agent. It proves that you believe in your own work enough to show it to someone else…even if they eventually do reject it.

What brought this on? Well, we received a rejection, of course. But in the grand scheme of things, it was a very GOOD rejection…though this particular manuscript wasn’t right for this particular editor at this particular time, I still believe it to be a strong piece of writing, and I still believe in the story. So, I will send it out again until it finds a home.

Somewhere, someone is looking for this story. If I didn’t believe that, I would simply throw in the towel and give up on writing. But that really is not an option. Writers write – that’s what they do. That’s what I do, and eventually, somewhere, somehow, one of the manuscripts we are working so diligently on will strike just the right chord with just the right editor/agent at just the right time, and we will be on our way to publication.

Until then, we’ll keep writing and sending manuscripts out.