I’d heard that the bubble of elation you feel when you first have something accepted for publication doesn’t last long.
I only half-believed it, of course. Surely I would be different, my expectations set better, my heart both more and less trusting.
Because if one acceptance happened, couldn’t another? And another? And even if rejection came, wouldn’t that one acceptance be enough to keep me going?
Turns out the answer is no, no, and nope.
I’d had a story out to one magazine for a good while – close to three months – and as the time stretched out without getting a rejection notice, I began to hope. The acceptance of another story just made that hope bigger, and my dreams with it: What if all the stories I had out currently got accepted? What if I was able to join SFWA this year, all in a rush, with three stories that I’ve spent years working on all getting accepted in a short window of time?
But the rejection came yesterday, and my little bubble of hope popped with it.
Now I feel like half a success, half a failure. It doesn’t help that I’ve heard nothing from the magazine that’s accepted a story since that acceptance; no signed contract, no payment, nothing. So even that success feels ghostly, as if one strong wind could blow it away, and I’d be back where I started. Unpublished. Always-rejected.
I’m telling myself to be patient. That the only thing I can control is the writing, so I’d better damn well do that part.
And it does comfort me, a little, that I wrote 2,223 words this week. I’m back to making good progress on the novel, and I’ve got two stories to edit into shape before sending them out into the world.
Chances are they’ll probably be rejected, too. But I can’t control that. What I can do is write another story, then another, and keep writing. Keep improving. And keep submitting.
One story got through. I can keep writing until another one does, too.
