Ego-bruising

Above photo: Jeff brings in two rented canoes one early misty morning at the cottage.

Ouch...got a rejection letter from a publisher today, the first for the novel that I sent out through my agent earlier this month. I was bracing myself, but it was still a bit of an ego-bruise. On the positive front, the editor did read until the very end, liked the premise of the story. She enjoyed some aspects but not others; the latter was enough to make her reject the mss.

Though I'm not happy about being rejected, I am grateful for the detailed comments and suggestions for improvement in the letter; this editor obviously took considerable time with my story. After reading through her letter several times, I carefully filed it away and went back to my other work, fighting the impulse to immediately revise my novel to incorporate her suggestions. Do other fiction writers go through this?

If I start getting similar pattern of comments from other editors, however, I'll likely take a hard look at the story again and do some revising. I am utterly determined to get this story published, dangit, and I'm mentally prepared to weather the necessary ego-bruising (probably a lot of it) along the way and do whatever work is necessary to make it happen.

Meanwhile, onwards and upwards. Got another illustration inquiry today; this potential client found me through my Flickr pics. I'm also nearly finished the webzines article for Writer's Digest after interviewing editors from Nerve, Slate, Wired, Salon, McSweeney's, Dragonfire, Strange Horizons, Grist, and Chow.com. Some of these editors were somewhat difficult to get hold of, but I found that my strategy of polite persistence usually worked. :-)

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