I started this blog last month after I submitted my first story to The Writers of the Future contest.
I am not published. I have a hard time finishing what I start and over all, am not someone that you should take advice about being a professional from. However, if you’re here because you’re looking to see what it takes to one day GET there, I’m happy to have you around.
My friend who entered with me just got her rejection letter Monday and now I’ve been checking my inbox on a thrice-daily basis just waiting for a response.
My hopes for this contest were not to place first. Not to be negative or to ‘not believe in myself’ but while I feel that my story was the best story I could have submitted at this time, I don’t know if it was really good enough to place. But we can’t just hang onto our stuff forever. We have to start somewhere. My goal and my hope is ‘Honorable Mention’ more than anything else. HM means that I made it past the first round of crit and am stepping in SORT OF the right direction.
Everyone gets rejected. I’m sure that I probably will too, despite my hopes. It’s the act of accepting it and moving on to submit again that makes you a writer. So here is to trucking down the writer road littered with those ‘Sorry, but this story is not what our publication is looking for’ and onto the steps of publication.
The Writings of April Holec 
This is such a necessary thing. I really pushed myself to start submitting more often, and I have accumulated a lot of rejections (and so far, only one acceptance). But some of those rejections have come back with notes that have really helped to improve me as a writer, and I’ve developed a very thick skin along the way.
Rejection really doesn’t feel so bad once you accept that the only thing being rejected is this one story, in this one form, by this one specific market or individual. And in fact, I’ve received one or two rejections that felt better and more promising to me than that one acceptance did.
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