Rejected, Accepted, and Still Going

Excel has probably about a million different features and formulas, but honestly I don’t use any of them. My husband set up our budget spreadsheet and is an Excel master, but I’m more of a basic user.

I use Excel to track my submissions. What I submitted, when it was sent off, where I sent it to, if it was an article or short story, and if it was accepted or rejected.

The “Rejected” column has me feeling a little beaten down. As writers, we all know that rejections far outweigh the “yes”s, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy to take. For me, it’s not so much the individual rejections, it’s the image of them all combined in a tidy little spreadsheet.

Those few “yes”s, though? They’re the sip of water when I’m trudging through the desert, fighting to get over the next sand dune to that magical land of full-on publication. Recently I’ve had two articles published and not much else, although not for lack of trying and pitching and querying the shit out of myself.

Recently, though, I got a larger drink of water when I found out that my short story I’m Coming, Mary will be published in this year’s SandScript. That acceptance came at just the right time, as I had been struggling with my competence as a writer. I mean come on, you can only have so many people say, “Sorry, not for us,” before you start to question the validity of your chosen career path.

Writing isn’t easy, and it isn’t necessarily the softest on the ego, but I still couldn’t picture myself doing anything else. Which is why I drink through the rejections. You know, sometimes.

How do you deal with rejections?