I hate being rejected, but who doesn’t. Opening my mail today, I recieved several rejections. It stunk! It stung, it hurt my feelings. Isn’t that what rejection does? Hurts?
Had this happened years ago, it would have crushed me. I would have hung my head in defeat and forgotten my dreams of being a writer. Then again, that’s exactly what happened during my first real attempt at writing.
After treating my article like a newborn baby, carefully placing it on beautiful pink stationary, I walked it to the mailbox. Prayers that my story would make it into the hands of someone that would love it as much as I did were sent up hourly. I waited but not patiently. My big check never came but my first rejection letter did. I didn’t submit another article for 10 long years, how sad.
What about now? Will I stop submitting? No. In fact I take rejections in stride. At first it’s disappointing but, really, I had to submit several queries to obtain several rejections. Now that’s progress.
Last month everything I submitted was accepted. It was a great month and I was very encouraged. What’s the lesson here? Rejection is a reality in writing. It’s not what we as writers are shooting for. However, the more queries that we submit, changes are that our rejections may increase. It comes with the territory.
And lucky for you, I wouldn’t be writing this to encourage you had my queries not been rejected. I would have been writing articles. My loss is your gain and that’s how we are to look at rejections. They are opportunities to learn, grow and possibly discover something new about ourselves.
I smiled today when I opened all the rejections. What was the first thing I thought of? “Oh, this will make a great article for my blog.”
Wow! Now that is maturity in my writing journey.
When those rejections come, look at them as an opportunity to encourage someone else down the road.
How much better we are able to motivate those whose shoes we have walked in.
Tips on writing a great query; http://www.writing-world.com/basics/query.shtml
Blessings,
Cindy
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