As you can guess from the title, my story was not chosen for the Machine of Death Volume 2 anthology. So it goes. With 30 spots and 2,000 entries, I figured it was a long shot. At least the waiting is over now.
I guess it’s human nature that, while winning makes you excited, losing makes you…philosophical. You get to thinking about how acceptance and rejection are like yin and yang, how each one leads to the other, how neither can exist alone. Hell, we’re writers, after all. Thinking about this crap is pretty much what we do.
You’ve probably heard before about the power of rejection. It sharpens you, keeps you focused, spurs you to improve yourself (if you let it).
The joy of rejection, however, is a strange creature. It isn’t obvious and ecstatic like the joy of acceptance. It’s reclusive, hiding shyly behind disappointment. But it’s there all the same.
Why? How does it survive? What does it feed on?
It’s simple. Rejection means you’re still in the game. It means you’re still trying. It means your writing is still alive. Because, look: the real enemy of a writer isn’t rejection. The real enemy of a writer is – and has always been – giving up.
The joy of rejection is the joy of acceptance.
Blah, blah, blah. So what am I going to do with all this fortune cookie wisdom?
Well, for starters, I’m going to finish revising the story I’m on now. My deadline for that is Thanksgiving, as I mentioned before. Then, I’ve decided, I’m going to write and submit another story every month for the foreseeable future. I had been planning to get back into the novel again, but I think I need to focus on short stories for a while, keep my work out there, improve myself, and try to get a publication credit. Then I’ll be better prepared to return to the novel. Because, let’s face it – until I can get 2,000 words published, what makes me think I can get 100,000 words published?
That’s the plan, anyway.
Tell me, have you been rejected lately?
Brian D. Buckley 
Not lately, but that’s because I *am* in the midst of a novel, and thus I’m not really putting myself out there.
(Unless you count ratings and reviews on my ebook, in which case I get judged daily. And yeah, there’s a joy in it, even when the responses are negative.)
I can’t wait to be querying though. Seriously. For all the reasons you listed, I can’t wait to make my spreadsheet and record all the rejections, form or otherwise. (And hopefully a few requests too!)
Sorry about the pass, but like you said, it’s a good sign, in its way. And hey, that story is written. You can send it to other places!
Unfortunately, I can’t really send the story anywhere else. The theme of the anthology was that each story had a highly specific premise, which was explained in the anthology’s introduction but not in the stories themselves. I suppose I could adapt it for a general audience, though.
Not really, because like Kristan I haven’t been submitting to publishers lately. Hopefully I’ll be able to send a publisher a story by christmas so they can laugh in my face though!(Or there’s the small chance that they won’t, and will ask for more. But that’s for later. Now I need to continue revising the second draft)
Good luck, Alex!