One of my friends just told me she got a rejection on her story.
I don’t get it.
This is a great story, colorful characters…sometimes the publishing industry leaves me so frustrated. Good stories get rejected, crap stories get accepted. It’s so annoying–I had another friend who also got a rejection on a fun story who said, “Maybe I just need to learn how to write like crap.”
I guess. God knows, I get where she’s coming from…it reminds me of that story circulating the Internet about how great women are like apples in trees…they sit high up and it’s more difficult to get them, so most men just go for the apples that have fallen from the trees because it’s easier…now, taking aside the obvious problems with this story (like, what are you saying? Because I got a life and a husband, somehow I’m an easy apple?), I think there’s a message in there for authors.
Just because you’re rejected doesn’t mean you or your story is worthless. If you have a distinctive voice, maybe it will take longer, but in the end, it will be worth it. Jayne Ann Krentz said it best: “Believe in yourself and in your own voice, because there will be times in this business when you will be the only one who does. Take heart from the knowledge that an author with a strong voice will often have trouble at the start of his or her career because strong, distinctive voices sometimes make editors nervous. But in the end, only the strong survive.”
