Well once again  I  have been rejected by more  various publishers  and editors in the world of writing …. Some have been for some of my poems and others were for some of my short stories.

“They” say you have to have a thick skin as a writer.  I think by now I could give a rhino a run for his money when it comes to the thick skin department….But it still stings no matter how thick it has become. Like if I was rhino grazing  on the Africa savannah and this big mutated experimental mosquito came by and landed on my ass and went  boink boink..boink (he’s testing where he wants  to aim his stinger) and then whammo!  Ouch…it still doesn’t feel good.

Here a few of my latest rejection excerpts below:

“Unfortunately, we feel that this piece is not ready for publication. We found the story entertaining, but it needs a bit of work.  Please consider joining our fantasy workshop on our  website, the community is very generous with their time and can offer some great advice.

We wish you all the best in your future writing endeavors and please do try us again.”

and this one

“Thank you for submitting your poems. We enjoyed them both but unfortunately cannot offer publication at this time. Thanks for your interest in HFQ and do try us again.  You’ll crack this nut someday . . . just keep after it.”

As rejections go they were not so bad. Both editors actually seemed to care how I took the rejection and they seemed genuine in there request to see more of my stuff. So I would call these positive rejections because they showed interest in my work..right?…I mean they could be just kissing my ass and stroking my ego so I don’t go off the deep end and go on a drinking bender at some kareoke bar singing “We Built this City”  by Starship…yeah I know I don’t want to go there either.

So being a man of action, I have joined a local writing group to expand my skills and work on my craft further. They meet every other Sunday during the month from 2-4pm in a nice little coffee/pastry  shop fairly free of people at that time.  I just went to my first group meeting on Dec 1st.  I must say there is something to be said about instant feed back regarding your writing.  It was a very rewarding experience. So far they seem to be a nice ecletic group of people. It is a group consisting of seven people with most of them who actually write my kind of stuff;  fantasy, horror, science fiction..so they get me which I like. It’s also a pretty balanced group of four women and four men ( I make the fourth man).

My next meeting will be Dec 16th coming up and I look forward to it. It was a little nervous and intimidating being the new guy coming into the group  giving my opinion on there stuff but I wanted to help them just has much as they were helping me..after that realization it was easy to just jump right in on the discussion.

So if you get rejected, try to turn lemons into lemonade or wine (that helps to).  Don’t just sit on your hands…do something different, shake things up….don’t be arrogant and think you are the perfect writer already…else you never will be…:)