The incubus itself crouched on my chest last night, its weight pressing all of my confidence out of me. I received a rejection letter last night that left me devastated. I won't go into the specifics, just that it was a bad one, my first.
The demon is one of my own making. I've been rejected before and will no doubt get rejected again. For the most part, the rejections have been encouraging. But this one was vile. So what do I do? I ignore all of the good things that I've received about writing, all of the positive comments and focus on this one crummy rejection.
No one can make us unhappy unless we let them, no one can shake our resolve unless we let them. And I let this one person make me question my talent and my ability to write.
Luckily, I've been through this before and I can get myself through it. The positive is it makes me really look at my writing and decide why I am doing this. I get upset enough that I want to focus on my writing and damn the market place and the movers and shakers of such.
My point is to those who are new to submitting, it will get ugly, but you have to decide how much you are going to let it shake you. How badly do you want to write? Go ahead and throw yourself a pity party, mine consisted of two Tecates, a glass of wine and numerous Reese's peanutbutter eggs I found leftover from Easter. But realize the only one that can make you quit is yourself. If you let anyone else dictate your desire to write and your drive to accomplish publication, you have no one else to blame.
