Update

A fine Monday morning! Wrapping up my April project (will be finished sometime Wednesday), I just finished the second round of interview-emails for another project I'm looking at potentially doing, and I'm about ready to cycle a couple of short stories that I got back.

Many people get discouraged or offended by rejections. I don't. I think the reason for that is I spent years prior to actually doing this for a living making connections and establishing friendships with people who do this for a living, full-time. I also studied the success stories of some of my most favorite authors, and I've been down the beat path of doing door-to-door sales calls when I was first starting out my construction company years ago using my OWN name, rather than relying on the family reputation to land me work.

It's business. Some of the writers I've connected with over the years were rejected even AFTER they won awards for their stories. One writer in particular I know of won a Nebula award for a story back in the late 90s, only to have the majority of his stories rejected over a six month period of time. It takes time to sell an idea.

The good thing is that there are hundreds of magazines, e-zines, anthologies, and contests out there compared to 15 or even 20 years ago, then market was drastically smaller. The potential for getting your work out there is a lot higher, and it's not only being graded by a select few elite editors who shrug off everyone but the biggest names who are going to bring in the fat paychecks. There are a lot of publications these days who focus on quality writing, rather than the name behind the story. I find this commendable. Too often you see big-name authors pushing out shit short stories simply because they were paid a few thousand dollars to write something for a magazine simply to boost its sales. It's good that there are publications out there who cater to the little guy who, like me, is working on getting his work out there and refining his craft.

I've had moderate success. On the plus side, while I'm circulating short stories to various publications, I've got a successful freelance career going, which means I'm building up credits even if they aren't in the short story market.

The way I do it? I simply look at a rejection with a "your loss" mentality. Years from now, when I've made more of a name for myself, I'll be able to look back and chuckle at the magazine that could have been for ignoring my early works.

Arrogance? Perhaps. But I like to look to my role models for examples. I may not like his writing style, but his stories are compelling. Dan Brown, he of Da Vinci Code fame. If you've not read his success story, you ought to. His first three novels sold so poorly that DVC was his last attempt at writing. The previous novels he wrote had only sold 3-4 thousand copies per, and he was going to go back to being a teacher if his fourth novel didn't sell. Then boom!, lo and behold, 250 million dollars later, he was an international best-seller who is now one of the most wealthy authors in the world.

Take Roger Zelazny. The guy worked for years in the social security office as a clerk, writing short stories for (as I remember) nearly 9 years before he had established enough of a reputation to work at it full time writing novels.

The key is to have patience and to remind yourself every day that no matter what, someone out there will eventually buy your work. That person will tell their friends, who will tell their friends, and even if it takes you 4-5 years, you will eventually transition to full-time novel writing.

I've researched this for years, preparing. I've done the workshops, I've done the conventions. My very first attempt at a short story last year sold to the very first place I sold it to. Luck? Possibly. I also know that I've got talent, and I'm honing my craft. Almost every author out there has to spend 3-5 years doing something else part-time before they get enough fans to buy their books and make it worthwhile to transition over to full-time novelist. My blessing is that I have a loving wife who supports my endeavour 100%, so even if it takes 5-6 years, I'm in this for the long haul.

That's my inspirational Monday afternoon post :) I'm going to take a break and watch some shows!