January 28, 2009
The other day, I posted about rejection and failure, and how it teaches a writer to win by learning how to lose. I wrote about how a writer has to learn to pick up the torch and carry it onward immediately after each and every setback. I wrote about how perseverence benefits us all across the board, and not just in the fiction writing realm.
Well, once again, I have to take my own advice. Tonight, I found out that I didn’t win a certain writing contest, and it’s a big disappointment. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, as it’s a highly competitive contest with a huge prize for the winner. But yes, I did get my hopes up. I honestly thought I produced and submitted an excellent, competitive entry deserving of the award. I knew there were lots of entries from writers all over the world for this international contest, but I still dared to imagine I had a chance. In fact, the possibility of winning was one of the dreams that got me through the year; whenever I got yet another rejection of a novel or short story, I still thought to myself, “Hey, there’s still that contest. And my entry rocks.”
So finding out I didn’t win is kind of hard to take. Not unexpected, I guess, but still a major drag. So now I have to follow my own grandiose advice and suck it up…don’t be a quitter…get back on the horse. Tomorrow, I will have to take a breath, say “sayonara” to the particular fantasy of winning that contest, and move on with the work. I must hit the word processor with a vengeance, write my Daily Grand on my new novel, fire on the revisions to my other novel, and crank out queries on existing books to likely editors. If anything, I must drive myself to work harder than ever, to take from this disappointment the fuel I’ll need to push onward and make other dreams become reality.
Such is the life of a fiction writer…at least a somewhat typical one struggling to make it without an early break. It’s a hoot, ain’t it? Welcome to my world! See you tomorrow.
