Rejection: Get over it

Jonathan just nagged me to blog, coz I've neglected it. Ok fine. I thought about blogging about the Canadian political circus, but then I decided that some people are afraid of clowns, so I'd better not. It's a busy time, coming up to Christmas. School concerts, shopping, dinner guests, decorating... My advent calendar says we're supposed to buy a tree today. Considering I haven't done the advent calendar tasks I was supposed to do yesterday nor the day before, I can't guarantee that the tree will happen today.

Really, what I want to talk about today is rejection. Again. I got a letter from Eddie Schneider yesterday. It simply was not tos his taste, and there's nothing I can do about that. Rats. But you know the worst part about getting rejected, once I've gotten through the initial drag of reading the letter and a bit of, "Why am I doing this to myself? Why don't I pursue some other career instead?" Really the worst part is telling other people. I always feel like I'm giving bad news. Like a doctor who has to say, "Sorry, your tests results showed a positive indication for [insert Really Crummy Condition here]." 

Everyone cares so much and they get excited for me whenever something cool happens in this long and often painful process, and I hate having to go around and tell people that it was just another false alarm. There's a small part of me that cringes and wants to hide away and pretend it didn't happen, but that's because there's a niggling fear that being rejected means my work is bad; and maybe it's a greater fear that if I tell people my work was rejected, they will believe my work is bad.

As Tom keeps reminding me, Jasper Fforde received 75 rejections for The Eyre Affair before he hit paydirt. 

The point is that the announcement of a rejection needs to be just as matter of fact as the announcement of the request for submission. Work through the misery and dejection and despondency (a process which should take about... 13 minutes) and then hunker down and get back to work. So here goes: Ladies and Gentlemen... I received a rejection from Eddie Schneider yesterday! 

Now where's my pen?