The Most Beautiful Words and the Hardest Words

Some of the the most beautiful words to find in the morning lurking in my inbox:

“Dear Tyrean Martinson,

Congratulations! We are happy to tell you that we have decided to publish your story/poem . . .”

Some of the hardest words to find in the morning lurking in my inbox:

“Dear Tyrean,

Thank you for your submission.

Unfortunately it has not been successful on this occasion and we will not be using it.”

The question is:  do I let words like these affect my writing, or my day?

Well . . . yes, I do. I can’t seem to help it. The best words fill me with a sense of elation and excitement, happiness, giddiness, the desire to shout from the rooftops, or at least from a facebook post. I carry the words around with me all day, and rejoice over them, again and again.

The worst words are the ones I try to shrug off and say don’t matter. Or I try to tell myself they don’t matter with things like . . . “Oh, well, I didn’t really work on that story that long, or that much. I didn’t really expect it to make it. So it’s all right. No big deal. Another day, another story, I can submit something again soon.” But still, lurking in the back of my mind is . . . “They didn’t like my writing. Does my writing suck? Is my writing good enough? Should I have spent more time on that piece? How much time is enough? If I can’t sell a short story, will I be able to sell my novel?

Thankfully I received these two letters in reverse order, with the rejection letter first - one week ago, and the acceptance letter second, yesterday. So, for the moment, I'm flying on elation and excitement, and these words keep looping in my head:

“Congratulations! We are happy to tell you that we have decided to publish your story/poem . . .”

I love, love, love those words.

The moral of my story is: I wouldn’t receive those wonderful, glorious, beautiful acceptance letter words if I didn’t keep submitting my work time after time, month after month, determined to find a market for my poetry and short stories.

I have to write, revise, and submit my work on the days that I find success.

I have to write, revise, and submit my work on the days that I find rejection.

I have to write, revise, and submit when my inbox is full of chatty letters and advertisements and I’m still waiting to hear back from publications.

Write, revise, submit. Repeat x infinity.

News in Blogland

RAOK - Becca and Angela at The Bookshelf Muse are hosting Random Acts of Kindness this week. Check it out to celebrate kindness in the bloggy world. Two Kindness Gurus I want to highlight for just a moment today: Karen Lange at Karen Lange, and Alex J. Cavanaugh. These two bloggers have encouraged me and many others. (more about them and their rockin' kindness on Friday)

Flash Fiction Blogfest - Cherie Reich is hosting her second annual Flash Fiction Blogfest on Monday!

Upcoming Posts :

Poetry and Thankfulness (Friday)
Flash Fiction Blogfest (Monday)
Wise and Beautiful Editors Who Say NO? (Wednesday)
Memorial Day Post (Monday the 28^th)
Wise and Beautiful Editors Who Say YES! (Wednesday the 30th)

100 Days of Revision Day 16 Update

I've made changes, and keep making them, but I am very happy with my novel at the moment. I know it's not perfect, but I'm loving my characters right now, and revision is going slowly but well. Yesterday I think I only worked on four paragraphs, but I think I fixed some character issues . . .so it's good. Today maybe I'll get through 1,000 words or so . . .I hope.