Rejection

Writers - and most people in the creative field -  are a pain loving breed. They put themselves out there. Time after time. Their work, their ideas, sometimes deep inner thoughts  are handed over to some one they don't even know. And often times their ideas are rejected.Some time for the content.  You're told the piece of work, in which you slaved over for hours, days, or months isn't what they "are looking for," or even more ambiguously, they say "we are going to pass." How can it not be what your looking for?How could you pass on this? It has everything. It has a little part of me, or a little part of some one I know. It houses a dark secret,  a deep insecurity or fear, or some great epiphany within the words.It must be a mistake, or the editor didn't read it.

Since I have really started writing, the last year, maybe even less, I have been rejected a total of 3 times and accepted a grand total of 0 times. I am in the camp of saving my rejection notices. 1) to know what did and didn't (mostly didn't )work for a certain publication, so I have a better idea of what they are looking for. 2) It's extra motivation, some times positive and sometimes negative. I received a rejection letter that stated that they had "No major issues with the piece, it just wasn't what we are looking." I spun this to say, whether true or not is debatable, "You're writing is good enough to be published, but the content of the story isn't what we would publish." I know that there needs to be a balance, and just because you're a  phenomenal technical writer it doesn't mean people are going to want to read your creative writing. But if the content is great, it will have a hard time being published if the writing aspect of it sucks. In fact it will hinder the content. So again its a balancing act.

One of my favorite criticisms I have ever gotten, and this is in all honesty, was from a forum  I frequent called Bloody-disgusting.com. Some of the members in the forum have a small write-off every spring and Fall. In the fall of 2010 I submitted a piece to it. This was the first piece I have ever submitted for anything. My first story of substance I have ever written in prose. My piece was panned, but one member said that he actually enjoyed it. He gave me 5's on every category. The next post was from the member running the Write-off said. (This is simply copied and pasted):
 " So you're basically saying you're not scoring the piece on its own categorical merit, but because it struck a personal cord with you?

Not a single piece thus far has been technically worthy of a perfect score. Frankly, this particular piece is filled with grammatical errors, mistakes in tense and perspective continuity, etc. You are going to have to do a better job of defending your scores if you expect them to be taken seriously.

In the end, I don't think it will have too much of an impact on the overall score or standing of our contestants. However if I am to stick to what was outlined in the structure of this contest, your score should not count"

And this guy was absolutely correct. On every account. The piece was everything he said it was.(the one qualm I with this members critique was how rude it was towards another member.) And I took his advance and ran with it. As I mentioned yesterday editing is a big deal. And just because something is written down on screen doesn't mean its done. Not by a long shot. I'm not going to post the piece I wrote for this write-off because, frankly, its pretty bad. I will most likely re-write it in the future. Though.

The moral of the story is that rejection comes and goes, but some one some where will like your story no matter what. But to be a writer you have to accept this critiques(not necessarily agree) and improve your work.