Midlist Writer: Focusing On The Little Victories

Friday 23 January 2009

Focusing On The Little Victories

A writer's life is one of long periods of work interspersed with occasional high points such as getting signed on for a new book. Rejections come far more often than acceptances, and complete silence from the publishing world is the general state of being for most writers.

To keep sane, it's a good idea to focus on the little victories.

I had two this week. One was that someone preordered my book American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics from Amazon. Given that the sales ranking is currently at 1.3 million, it's obvious that only one person bought one copy, but it's not coming out until September, so that's still pretty cool. Whoever you are, thank you.

The other was actually a high point in a low point. One of my short stories got rejected for Tesseracts, the most repected speculative fiction anthology in Canada. Coeditor and leading horror author Nancy Kilpatrick added a personal note to the form rejection letter saying it was a great story and while it didn't fit the mood of the anthology it should get published somewhere. I keep getting postive rejections on this story. Everyone agrees that it's good, but nobody wants to publish it! At least they don't all agree that it's horrible.

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