Sunday mornings are historically the nirvana point in my week. The kids tend to creep in the shadows on Sundays, preferring to sleep or watch cartoons instead of bicker and run to Mom and Dad (mostly), Kim sleeps in, and I like to slink down to my computer with a steamy cup of coffee and my headphones and tune out the expanse of the universe for a while.
Lately, I’ve been trying to push my writing to the next level, and that means actually putting it out there. Sundays have become the day I sneak downstairs while Kim is still snoozing, pull up Scrivener, and work on a short story, followed by a run through sites like Duotrope to find a good market. Obviously I’m not finishing a story every week, and I’ve only been doing this for the last month or so, but the progress has been steady.
Disappointingly, that means that the rejections have been steady too.
Last night before I went to sleep I received another rejection, this time for a piece of flash zombie fiction I’d written. That’s my second rejection (different stories) this week. Not a lot of rejection compared to some, I’m sure, but its still depressing. I know I can write, I know I’m capable of it – so what’s missing? Friends who are published think my writing is good – what am I missing? Is it solely the matching of market to story? Or is there some some flaw in my storytelling that editors see and shrink back from, some flaw that remains hidden to the average reader?
Of course, in this age when anyone smart enough to run a geocities account (yes, I know its been dead for years) can call themselves an editor and “publish” your story, I become afraid of letting my standards dip so far in my desire to be published that I will take anything, anywhere just to say I achieved it. I’m not intentionally being a snob here – believe me, I know I don’t have a right to that sense of entitlement – but I do have criteria. My better half tells me I focus too much on the end product, instead of what it’s really all about, which is telling good stories that entertain people. And she’s right.
But damn, it would be nice to do both at the same time.
