Happy Monday, webbies.
*cracks knuckles*
I’m home today on account of Katy getting her cast off (we hope), so I figured what better way to spend a few minutes this morning than posting to the blog? I mean, really, its not like I should be doing dishes or cutting down the jungle outside or anything. Right?
Yesterday, we went out and got our hair cut. Yep, all of us, even Kim and me. Everyone has a lighter, bouncier ‘do, and by the magic of late summer that translates into bouncier, happier attitudes. The prospect of the cast coming off today, of course, helps a lot. I’m being cautious because Kim is notoriously pessimistic, and I’m infamously optimistically, and the truth is that today is x-rays with a likely potential of the cast coming off, not the guaranteed, set in stone event I like to think of it as.
This morning I caught up on my feed reading, including the Genreality posts from the past few weeks, Key Moments In a Writing Life Part 1 and Part 2. Reading through the articles, especially the first one, what stood out the most to me were the gaps between when Ken started sending stories out and the first acceptance, not to mention the footnotes on rejections. How does that make any kind of sense? Established authors had to, what, work to establish themselves?
OK, so maybe that was a little caustic. But really, its one thing to have the “everyone has to start somewhere” attitude, and another to have evidence of it. Jamie G. chided me yesterday on twitter that “The only thing worse than rejection is not sending the story back out again.” He’s so right. Its overly simplistic to look at a writer’s accomplishments and only see the tip of the iceberg, never perceiving the number of failed stories and rejections that lead up to success. But its also a much easier path to take. Failing on the first submission lets you call it quits and become depressed justifiably – you sent it out, it got rejected, the world just hates you and your writing. Never mind that maybe it wasn’t the right venue, wasn’t a good day for the editor, or that your story might actually need some work. Of course, its also easier to admit that when you’ve had a good night’s sleep than when you first received the rejection with no positive reinforcement in your portfolio yet.
So, today I have some goals. There’s the expected dishes and machete work in the back yard. There’s also a promised game of Magic with Anna. But its also time to re-read some stories and make sure they are as fresh as I think they are, making edits as necessary; its time to put together a list of first and second (and third and fourth) tier markets to try the stories in. Its time to put it out there.
Its time.
