I DON’T WANT YOU! – Dealing with Rejection

The flashing light on the phone was always a little ominous when I was the sports editor at the local newspaper. A message. What would it be?

1. A subscriber who didn’t get their paper hitting the wrong extension was the most common.
2. A coach or school official calling in a score either way late (like they should have done it the night before) or way early (I didn’t usually come in until 1 or 2 p.m., so rarely had games been played already). 
3. A compliment or kudos. Yes, it did happen on occasion.
4. The dreaded complaint or call for (sometimes legitimate) correction. Nothing ruined the day like that, especially if it was something that we messed up.

One day, it was something else. It sounded like any older, angry man, and he delivered one emphatic line: “I DON'T WANT YOU.” Then a click.

I know this fella was just trying to reach someone else at the paper and was frustrated – like many of us are – by computer phone systems. Yet, it was such a direct declaration. He didn’t want me. ME! Well, it was funny if nothing else, and that’s probably why I remember it.

Rejection is something we all must face. Whether it be the girl or boy who you want to go to the dance with saying no, or the college of choice sending a skimpy envelope instead of a thick one, or the bank denying the loan we need, rejection generally is only a moment away.

Aspiring writers get rejected a lot. Even very good aspiring writers deal with the dreaded rejection email.

In a writing group discussion a few months ago, I likened submitting work to publications like going on dates. You can have two perfectly nice people, but it doesn’t mean they are going to end up together.

Over the years, I estimate I’ve been rejected no less than 300 times for various stories. The only reason it isn’t more is because submitting takes time, and time isn’t something I always have. Often, I must decide if I want to spend an hour writing or spend an hour submitting. It’s a tough choice.

Some of you might say, “Maybe you should take a hint.” Trust me, it does cross the mind from time to time. Maybe I’m just not that good. It’s possible that’s true, too.

Most of these rejections are form letters like this:

Dear Dan,

Thank you for submitting "Keeping Time" to XXXX. On this occasion your story hasn't made it and I'm sorry to disappoint you. I wish you success in finding the right home for this piece.  

Form letters often mean I didn’t catch the attention of the first reader or gatekeeper for the publication. That can mean that the work wasn’t good enough, or it didn’t fit the publications niche, or that the reader just didn’t like it or get it. There can be a hundred reasons.

I don’t give up because for every ten form letters or so, I get one like this below:

Dear Dan,

 

Thank you for letting us read "String Theory." After careful consideration, we’ve decided we won’t be able to use it in XXXX.

 

Sincerely,

ZZZZ

-------

I enjoyed this, Dan. We just felt it was a little too short for the story that should be told. Great base for a longer work.

So, a statement like that is encouraging, but also challenging. Are they right? Do I need to go back to the drawing board on that story? Maybe it is a novella or novel, not a short story? That’s all part of the game of learning how to handle rejection, criticism, and advice. What to keep, what to consider, and yes, what to ignore.

The point I want to make is that if you are trying to get into the writing game, or really into anything, you can’t let a few (hundred) rejections discourage you. Take the help and criticism as it comes and continue to find ways to get better.

The Second War – Stumbling into a Pandemic

“For all of man’s cleverness in making guns and tanks and gas, God proved again that he was the best at killing. A flu, stop that, if you think you’re so clever.”

For the last five years, I’ve entered a series of writing contests conducted by NYCMidnight.com. The organization runs several contests throughout the year including screenwriting, flash fiction, and short story. In all the contests, writers are provided prompts and a set amount of time to write a story based off the prompt.

"The Second War" was created for the Flash Fiction contest in 2020. I was given a genre (historical fiction), setting (a fort), and an object (scissors), and I had 48 hours to write a story no longer than 1,000 words. One of the appeals of this contest is that it divides writers into groups based on the prompt, and then judges rank the top stories. For the Flash Fiction contest, you are guaranteed two rounds of writing, after the second round the five writers in the group with the most points move on. I think there are four rounds.

"The Second War" became a happy and timely accident. I’ve never written historical fiction, so I went out searching for forts, and I came upon information on Fort McHenry being one of the epicenters of the Spanish Flu following the first World War. Considering we were suffering through the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seemed appropriate to write this story. The other interesting part of the story is that Fort McHenry was also the staging ground for what was called the “Second War,” the U.S. Military’s project to rehabilitate returning troops and train them to become productive members of the American workforce.

Obviously in 48 hours, one can only do so much research, and I tend to find too much research bogs down the narrative in fiction stories, especially when you only have a thousand words to work with. I gleaned enough about the environment and the public reaction to the flu to realize that things were pretty much the same in the early 1900s as they are now. Many folks didn’t want to trust the government or doctors, and politicians and public health officials were balancing the welfare of the citizenry with their own political and financial aspirations.

The story didn’t fare quite as well as I would have hoped in the contest, but I did some minor revisions and later submitted it to Clever Fox Literary Magazine, which picked it for its first issue this past summer.

The 2021 Flash Fiction contest is ongoing at NYCMidnight. I was really pleased with the story I wrote for the first round and will find out how it fared the second week of September.

Here is a link to “The Second War” as published by Clever Fox Literary Magazine: Clever Fox Literary Magazine - Issue 001 by Clever Fox Literary Magazine - issuu

 

Get a Life - I Mean It

 "As he lay dying, Bug Boy remembered the first spider, the Argiope Aurantia, curled up against the glass of the Ragu jar that his father pulled from the freezer." 

In the Summer of 2020, my first fiction story "Get a Life" was published by the website The Write Launch, which was the culmination of a very long journey for a story that survived several iterations, edits, lonely days collecting dust on my computer's hard drive and at least one massive overhaul. By the time it was published, it had been alive in my head and then in words at least 15 years. 

The story grew from a few ideas and images I had. Those ideas rattled around my head for a long time before I finally started piecing together a draft. The first idea has its seeds in my journalism days. A news story has two lives. The one leading up to the news event and then the consequences. So, I wanted to write a story that simultaneously led to an event and depicted the consequences of an event, in this case, a murder. One storyline follows the wake of the murderer first through his eyes and then those around him. The second is the victim, told through the people in her life, leading to the murder. The story crescendos with the murder through the eyes of the victim. 

The second idea is the flip expression "Get a Life." Something you tell the fellow giving you too much flak on social media, perhaps. In the story, Bug Boy doesn't get a life after taking a life. Julia is trying to figure out how to have a life as a young, single mother, and the people around both characters are trying to understand their lives and this tragedy. Finally, I knew early on this was better than most anything I'd ever written, and I hoped this story would help me get the life I wanted as a writer. 

While the publication on the website hasn't yet sparked my ascension to the top of the literary world, I can tell it's already helped as I submit other stories. That one credit says to the editor, hey, someone else took a chance on this guy. 

The life of this story isn't over. The published story is just under 11,000 words, a total too long for some and too short for others. I have a series of short stories each a similar length to "Get a Life," that build off the people and places in "Get a Life." It's been sitting while I wait out a time agreement in a contract I regretted signing, and after that I hope to cast a line with an editor or two before finding either an agent or publisher. Just me, trying to get a life, again.

Anyways, I wanted to begin this blog with this story, because it's really the starting point for everything that lies ahead. I hope you stick around to see where all this goes. 

Below is the link to "Get a Life" posted on The Write Launch, if you desire to read it. 

https://thewritelaunch.com/2020/05/get-a-life/