I saw this post from one of my dear Livejournal buddies and I thought, well ain’t she speaking the truth? With Dot’s permission, I’ve posted it here for my readers. It’s something to think about when rejection threatens to overcome you.
Excerpted from “Goin’ all Pollyanna” on dotificus.livejournal.com
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Working to get published SUCKS. It just sucks all the time until it doesn’t anymore. So many many things about it suck so MUCH. I don’t need to list them—you know what they are. And they hurt and unseat you, and fill you with doubt and fear and the sadness unto eating too much chocolate.
So what’s a writerly girl to do?
I’ve been thinking in terms of “detaching.†Somehow not caring so much. Focusing on the fun parts and not letting all the suckage get to me.
Hahahahahahahaha. Yeah, right. That’ll work. NOT. Not for me, anyway.
So I have a new tactic. A more aggressive one. Because I’m MIGHTY, yeah, that’s right.
But before I tell you what it is, I want to tell you a little story. About my vacuum cleaner. Yes, the purple one. I need to preface this by saying that my mother had disparaged this lovely machine quite recently. Turned up her nose at it, criticized it, acted like it was weird and how does it work anyway and I don’t think it works very well. My fancy brand-new European vacuum. But I paid her no heed. I’m used to my mother criticizing things. Like EVERY thing.
Or I *thought* I paid her no heed.
But see, after I finally found it the other day, I vacuumed. It wasn’t working very well. And I was flooded with a sick feeling, she was right she was right, it’s crap, it’s a stupid vacuum. A stupid weird vacuum bought by a stupid weird person.
But then I turned it off and checked the hose and LO! a hairball. A clog. I cleared it and it worked powerfully well once more.
Yet how quick I’d been to call up my mom’s critical words. How easily they’d poisoned my love for my weird purple European vacuum. Which works extremely well.
Dot, WHERE are you going? is there some tie-in between trying to get published sucking and vacuums sucking? What?
Here’s the tie-in—you can’t let yourself be poisoned. By long hopeless waits. Or heartbreaking near misses. Et screaming cetera. You have to attack all the stuff about trying to get published that sucks. You can’t be detached about it—when a rejection, or whatever bad thing happens, calls up your roaring doubt demons, you have to slay them. You have to go NO! this vacuum is great! You are wrong!
After a long enough time of enduring and battling, you may decide enough is enough, I’m out of here. But while you’re still in it—you shouldn’t let the foul-ups and disappointments and setbacks overpower you. Treat them like the poison they are. Don’t let them make you feel stupid and weird and hopeless and sad. Reject them.
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From Cynthea: What a concept, right? Reject the rejections? Yes, reject the rejections. Listen to them if they say something that rings true to you, of course, but don’t let them ever tell you can’t make it in this biz. Don’t ever let them control your self-worth. Instead, prove those rejections wrong. Keep at it. Keep improving. Keep going! Perseverance and self-confidence are survival skills you’re going to need to stay on the road to publication. And ain’t that the truth.