thepublicationproject.com
a website by writers, for writers seeking publicationA Numbers Game, or how to submit your story or novel
“It’s a number’s game.” This advice came out of a writing class at San Diego State University in reference to publication. The idea was, you need to submit your manuscript multiple times in order to make a sale. Yes, a sale, whether there’s money involved or not.
How many is enough? One friend I know sent her memoir out over 200 times, got some strong nibbles, but no takers. In this market, she’s off and running with a self-published book, speaking at conferences, doing readings, in short enjoying being an author and expanding her contact with the world.
My novel has gone out to almost 60 agents, and a couple editor/publishers directly. This is over the last 15 years or so, and maybe some of those early versions were “not ready.” Another key idea to submission: don’t blow your one chance with an agent by submitting your book before it is ready. (Corollary: how will they know if you submit it again if they reject it in less than 60 seconds the first time? Maybe it will seem vaguely familiar in a good resonating, collective unconscious sort of way.)
“Start at the top and let them knock you down from there.” The person giving this advice, said she would start with Jackie O before moving on down the ladder. (This was a long time ago, wasn’t it? I was thinking about publication when Jackie O was still alive? Wow. Were there dinosaurs then, too, Grandma?) Still this idea has merit and has been repeated. Start with your dream agent, or your top magazine. The other approach is to try the “little places,” where the competition is not so fierce. Which is it? Maybe I’ll just sit on my hands until I get clear on this issue.
Someone on the golf course yesterday said, I used to do it this way, but that kept happening. “I since learned to …”
I used to wait for clarity on where/who/how to submit my work, but I ended up rarely sending anything out, and that is getting me nowhere. I since learned to …
… just do it.
In that spirit, here’s the next question: how to achieve those numbers, and how many submissions is enough? One mystery novelist I met at a conference said he’d become a “submission machine.” Another, a literary writer and professor, said he spent 50% of his time submitting, 50% on actual writing. Another well-published novelist kept revamping her query until she started getting nibbles (requests for partials) and finally sold, and keeps on selling. And there are many examples of classics or best-sellers turned down any number of times.
Not being a submission machine, I’ve come up with a reasonable compromise: take it up from 2-5 submissions a year, to 5+ a month. That makes 60 submissions a year. But does that work if you send out 15 different pieces, 4 times each? Is it better to send out the same 2 things, thirty times each?
As my husband says, if you’re not selling the first thing, use different bait. And he is a very smart man. Another thing he thinks is nutty: the no simultaneous submission rule. If a magazine takes 3 to 6 months to reject your story, and you have to wait that long before you can submit to another magazine, what does that do for your personal timeline?
I live in a state notorious for its poverty and dropout rate. We are often right up near Mississippi in many of those “worst of” statistics. (no offense meant, Mississippi.) So here’s an old local joke: Have you heard about the New Mexico lottery? Prize is a dollar a year for a million years.
You do the math.
Glacial Editing
I had a back-to-school dream this morning. I was a high school senior again, there were classes I’d not taken or studied for, perhaps unpleasant difficult classes with lots of reading, like world history.
I was talking the other evening to a former teacher of mine, the brilliant poet/novelist, Anya Achtenberg, and though it was late, and I was tired, and I couldn’t find the word at first to describe making a big structural change in my book, I finally found it: glacial. That is the pace at which I understand those big changes, but also the power and inevitability which I know I must make them.
When I woke up from the high school dream, I thought I could move chapter two out, put it further back in the story and amp up the tension at the beginning. This morning I made a new file and got going.
Glacial takes time, maybe a lifetime, maybe more than a lifetime, and how much time do I have, after all? It’s only a novel, after all. Isn’t it time to set it free into the world?
This brings me to the point of “not good enough.”
A teacher once said I was a “pretty good” pianist. I took this to mean I wasn’t good enough to play out in public. That I was actually mediocre. Last week at church, some friends thanked me for playing and said there was a difference between a good piano player, and a really good piano player. They implied I was in the latter category. As I took in this praise, I thought about how it could be true. Here’s what I came up with: I show up prepared, play stuff within my ability, stick with my parts, and know I can improvise if I need to. And I practice, practice, practice, so I have the depth to do just that.
As the fall gets going, and I find myself back to school on novel number one, a big work, a flawed piece that is right now, probably pretty good, I wonder, can I make it really good? What unpleasant history do I still need to study in order to graduate out of the depths of high school novel-writing? Or will some authority (read agent, publisher) come along and send me off to college?
A musician friend of mine and I were talking recently about endless editing of my book (he’s been working on his CD for a long time too) and he mentioned putting a necklace on a pig. You can dress up a pig, cover it in diamonds, but it is still, after all, a pig.
Perhaps it is not for me to decide if my novel is a pig or not. Perhaps it is time for me to halt that glacier. Can I do it?
I suppose I can.
Publishing 101, here I come.
The About Point
I have fifteen or so finished stories, two novels, several novellas, and more work in a variety of lengths and genres and stages of completion. Plus ideas. Don’t forget the ideas.
I say finished. Unfinished is easier to recognize.
I read somewhere that you can tell a story is finished when you keep changing the same word or sentence back and forth. Like a light switch, the writer of this witticism made it seem. The pretty dog bit the little girl. The little dog bit the pretty girl. The pretty dog …
I once heard a famous writer say he had rewritten the same story for twenty years. I was not much older than thirty at the time, so this seemed an impressive accomplishment. The story was ultimately published in one form or another, and was being read at a conference, and we were excited to hear it because the writer had once hung out with an even more famous, already dead writer. I did get the impression that nothing is ever finished in this writer’s universe until some worthy publication manages to wrestle the piece away from him and set it into print.
I know about editing endlessly. I have polished my first novel until it shines. I’ve cut tens of thousands of words merely by getting rid of prepositional phrases. I’ve moved or shortened scenes, deleted characters and exposition and dialogue, streamlined plot elements—and I’ve rewritten. Scenes that clunked have been replaced with scenes that sing. But have I re-visioned, that highest, most conscious form of self-editing?
Another writer, a master of the literary short story, once mentioned she always figures out what her story is ABOUT. It’s about joy. It’s about nostalgia for something that no longer exists. It’s about that moment when …
This, I think, is pithy. I imagine a successful poet must way go beyond her precise and beautiful language to wrestle with her meaning, perfecting the ABOUT until it is obvious to even us dullards who are her casual readers. She must dig deep within herself for what she knows, what she has learned, or is just now learning. Or maybe she simply trusts what comes out onto the page, that delicate and beautiful first draft that captures a truth. It either works or it doesn’t.
I have a few scribblings that never quite seem to work because they never get to the ABOUT point. I might like a sentence or two, I might think I’ve set a nice scene, I might have narrative drive. But the thematic meaning is not crystal. The punch line is missing. I send these pieces round and round in the polisher, with the hope that by drafting, drafting, drafting, I will eventual stumble upon what it is I’m trying to say by saying something, anything, really, really well.
In the spirit of Heinlein’s rule number three (Don’t edit except under editorial directive) one of these stories went out this week to The Sun, a magazine that has rejected me three times so far. A quickly drafted experimental piece went to an on-line magazine called Café Irreal (Irreal: dreamlike, rules suspended, non-symbolic, no ABOUT point necessary) call it an experimental submission. Two other medium good stories went out to PIF, another online journal. I’m readying a contest entry (deadline tomorrow) for Glimmer Train’s Award for New Writers. And because I was avoiding it, and likely to procrastinate, and because I really do care, I’ve boxed up my good finished fantasy story, Arguments, and sent it to a contest and to a British journal. All this took many hours, and much fortitude, so I have to say I’m a little pleased with myself.
Just do it!
Un-Undoable
Back in the 80′s, at my first writers’ conference, the facilitator, the poet, Kathlyn Spivak, asked the class what we did after we got a rejection. This was all new to me, as I was only a budding novelist with stars in my eyes and had never even thought of sending something out. One woman said she rewrote her story every time it was rejected. Even then this seemed not quite right. How many times can you rewrite a story, and after a while do you end up destroying it?
A writer friend of mine once took up painting as a hobby. I remember she went to a class somewhere in Northern New Mexico to paint for a few days. I’m going to go out on a fictional limb here, and make up more of her experience. (Please forgive me, my dear friend, or correct me, if you’d rather. But from here on, this is not really about you!) They were near Georgia O’Keeffe’s Abiquiu, NM home and it was late summer and the light was gorgeous. The landscape was full of strong colors, purple and gold flowers, deep red rocks, and azure sky. My friend–I’ll call her Gretchen–had some success as she painted, in fact, was called out by the teacher as a particular talent. Gretchen took this encouragement and started in on her next painting. She decided she needed to make a special effort now that she knew she was talented, and produce her best work yet. The piece proceeded as the others had. Off to a promising start. Gretchen, seeking something more, added a little red to capture the strength of the earth. Not quite the right shade, so she added a tinge of yellow, then deepened the blue of the sky. At this point, the teacher passed by with another compliment. Perhaps Gretchen was working on an impression, expressing her inner landscape, tapping her poetic nature? Gretchen was not satisfied. She took up the brush, dabbed her pallet, and covered up something she didn’t like. Now the piece had a cockeyed air to it, some of it bold, some of it soft and dreamy. Gretchen consulted her inner landscape, and found new emotions: frustration, anger, ambition. She picked up the brush again.
My point here? A musician friend says it is possible to ruin a recording with un-undoable mastering. Certainly paint is un-undoable. But as writers, we can always press the undo command, or save forward a new version of our story or novel. However, there’s something delicate here, beyond the changing of a scene or a few words. Something in the emotional landscape of the piece can be altered forever.
I find it most fun to work without a net, make changes out of inner conviction and not look back. I trust in this inner muse to guide me truly. But can the knowing sometimes source from outside oneself? From an agent or editor in a hurry to clear your work off their desk, for example?
In the spirit of my Pick a Story, Just Do It resolution, I found ONE place to start. I sent my fairy story Arguments to Fantasy Magazine, via their on-line submission’s page and received a rejection in 48 hours, as their guidelines state is usual. This, I was grateful for, because some of the other magazines I researched had a NO Simultaneous Submissions policy AND a six month turn around time. (You do the math!) My Fantasy Mag rejection read in part: “… but I’m going to pass. It didn’t quite work for me, I’m afraid.”
Do I take him at his word and decide my story does not work and spend the next two months trying to fix it? This was likely not a personalized letter rather a form rejection with my submission number and title pasted in. And anyway, it’s only his opinion. I believe my story does work, and I think it’s good. This is a lot of growth on my part, so I’ll do what Kathleen Spivak suggested to all of us that summer in her seminar. I’ll dust it off, put it back into its metaphorical envelope and send it off once more.
Just do it.
Submission Block and Heinlein’s Rules
Some people have writer’s block. I have submission block.
Given the choice, and a little free time, I’d rather write something new, edit something old, watch a movie, go to the gym, the grocery store, practice the piano, run payroll, or even wash the dishes. Dentist? Sure, if it’s just a cleaning, no problem. Cavity? Hey, what’s a little drilling and drooling after a shot of Novocain? Just a little pinch, right?
There’s the possibility, no, probability, of rejection. I’ve gotten kind of used to that, and usually don’t get mad, but sometimes go down the spiral of I’m no good, will never be any good, and should just stop trying. Since writing is one of the most fun things I do, this feels pretty bad. But experience tells me I’ll get over it in 24 to 48 hours.
Appearing a fool?
These are strangers, after all, and they can’t see my face turn red with shame and embarrassment or green with un-cool longing for their approval. Plus they’ve probably gotten worse submissions. We’ve all seen the agents at writers’ conferences roll their eyes at the things they receive in the mail. Cookies, invitations to weddings, threats on their life, letters that claim close kinship to Faulkner. Mostly the agents/editors just want to get rid of those piles of submissions, get that uninteresting story or query off their desk so they can keep searching for that next real almost-Faulkner, or is it JK Rowling they’re looking for these days?
How about not knowing where to start?
This is probably closer to the mark for a known procrastinator such as myself. Well, I used to be a procrastinator back in college days, when I counted on staying up all night courtesy of No-Dose caffeine tablets to study for an 8 AM geology test. (Maybe I should add geology tests to the list of rather-thans, though I’m afraid it would come after getting Novocain injected into my jaw.)
Taking a breath and starting. Immediately getting lost in a tangle of agent or magazine websites, reading all the stories, looking up literary references, wandering off to surf shoe websites. Watching a You-tube. Getting back to business and finding lots of discouragement like: Submissions currently closed until 2014. (Or indefinitely.) Agent pleased to announce she is now representing Ms. BIG and will never ever represent anyone as insignificant as YOU.Reading agented stories from authors under age 40. ONLY! Or this last: People named LAURA need NOT apply.
Not so bad as that, really, but there do seem to be roadblocks everywhere, particularly if you try to follow the rules. I am a rule follower, people pleaser, good-girl, A-student type (except in geology), so here are some good and encouraging rules I ran across a few years back. They are courtesy of Robert A Heinlein and appeared in his 1947 essay “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction.” (paraphrasing is mine)
HEINLEIN’S RULES FOR WRITING
—————————-
1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.
Next week: Just Do It, Part II
Absent, no excuse, Ma’am
In February, I posted my first Pick a Story blog. It is now the end of July. How can I explain my absence from my own blog and how does this relate to not getting published?
Do you hear me out there, you other writers who have stories or books sitting around, good ones, I mean, and aren’t submitting or even self-publishing? You introverted non-self promoters. You are the ones I’m talking to.
Once, at a writers’ conference, I met Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of the great concept story, Pay It Forward. She looked at me before signing my book and said, “You, you are the one who should be sending your work out.”
How did she know?
I think she saw before her woman in mid-life, a little shy and earnest, carefully-dressed in a group that tended to favor sloppiness. A woman clutching the-book-to-be-signed, a woman who might have said something like, I really loved your talk.
Or maybe she was psychic.
Yes, I did love her talk, her very generous pep talk, her grateful I-am-no-better-than-you, just-lucky-talk. I remember she got something published in a tiny magazine, and from there, got an agent. I remember she sold stories to the movies. I remember she did not get a college degree in nursing or whatever fall back position her mother was advocating. She did not want to fall back. She only wanted to be a writer.
I like to believe she was psychic when she gave me that loving look, that comment that said, I know you’re good. Because psychic is what it will take for an editor to find me with the way I’m getting after the publishing thing. A psychic editor who is on the prowl inSanta Fe,New Mexico, approaching coffee shop scribblers whose transparent thoughts bloom from the tops of their heads in cartoon bubbles. Brilliant insights, gorgeous poetic phrases, irresistible story lines filling those bubbles.
So before I get on with it, let me just mention the type who are great self-promoters, but not so great writers. You’ve met them? Read their ungrammatical posts, their unedited novels which they seem to have self-published by the dozen? I’m better than that, you think.
Maybe, maybe not.
Right now, I think not better. At least they believe in themselves and their work. At least they’re out there.
But hey, now so am I.
PS. Be sure to check out Catherine Ryan Hyde’s website.
Pick a Story
… any story.
I was asked the other day if I was ever in a rock band in High School. No, I wasn’t, but now I play piano every Sunday on stage: iconic pop tunes, rock and roll, up-beat originals, made-up-on-the-spot meditations in F minor, a touch of classical when I’m feeling like stretching our out-of-the-box church music by taking a foray back into the box.
So why didn’t I join a band in high school?
I remember going to a garage band practice where some boys were playing House of the Rising Sun over and over. Someone suggested I might play the piano. I can’t remember if there was one there or not, and certainly portable digital keyboards weren’t so common as they are now, but I shook my head. No. How could I imagine playing when the notes weren’t all written out for me on the page? How could I have the nerve to play in front of anyone, let along on stage? How could I imagine improvising, even playing a lead solo?
So it was fear and lack of imagination that stopped me.
Do I want to get published?
You bet.
So I have to conquer that fear.
I just looked up House of the Rising Sun on one of the many music sites, and am now in possession of the words and chords. If my husband wasn’t sleeping late, I could go over to the piano right now and play it. I could even sing. I could plug in the organ sounds and wail. I could improvise over the chords.
So that’s what I’m asking my self to do in the world of publication. Improvise. Follow along the lead sheet and see where it goes. Play it as many times as I need until I get it right, even have a transcendent, second-gear kind of moment where I might sound really good. I’ll pick a story, I’ll find some places to submit it. I’ll re-read and edit, polish even. (This a topic of another blog – see Heinlein’s Rules.) I’ll print and mail to the old fashioned places. I’ll kiss the envelope, say a prayer over it, visualize the un-paid intern who opens it. I’ll wish her a great cup of coffee in her favorite flavor, made just right by the male barista who flirted so nicely, maybe even asked her out. (Don’t you love that you need to qualify barista with the word male, because it ends in an “a” and appears feminine? Much more satisfying than saying “female” artist, or girl band as some feel compelled to do. My husband still on occasion says “authoress.” But that is another story.) Imagine her with her hair-twirling, table tapping, temple rubbing favorite gesture as she gets into reading my story, laughs at the right spot, says, “Hmm,” and takes it to her editor with a recommend. See the editor put it aside in her pile of many stories to read on the weekend. See my story slip out of the stack and land on the floor, its pages scattered, so she has to touch it, re-paginate, and so notices a phrase, or the opening line. Something like “The little fairies liked to argue.” See her put on her glasses and read more. And smile. And put it on the top of the stack.
From there you can imagine what happens. I’ll be waiting for the phone to ring. But first?
Pick a story. Any story.
To be continued …
Two Readings
I went to two readings this week, the first, my friend Jeanne Simonoff http://www.jewishbook.me/ launching her memoir, Saving Myself—a Los Angeles Childhood at Collected Works, a local bookstore, and the second one, downtown Santa Fe at the Lensic Theatre with its 821 seat capacity, featured nationally acclaimed, best-selling author Lorrie Moore.
Both authors read excerpts from their books and answered questions. Both authors had a good and eager crowd.
Jeanne writes in the voice of her child-self, and though she is a woman well into her mature years, her light curly hair, her simple language, her rosy checks, the innocence she projects as she embodies her six year old girl-self, makes that child come to life. Lorrie Moore read expertly from her latest novel, A Gate at the Stairs, three complicated passages, the first featuring a drum roll of “p” word like puce and pumpkin when describing her heroine’s visit to a clothing store. Later she spoke about the voice on the page as distinct from the reader’s voice, the author’s voice. This in answer to an over-stated question about whether she read her work aloud (like Jonathon Franzen) as part of her writing process. To me, it was the most interesting thing she had a chance to say.
Jeanne took questions from the floor, repeated into the microphone by her friend and writing partner, David, wearing his suit for the occasion, for the benefit of the standing room only audience. Lorrie was forced to endure the self-serving adulations of author and Salon editor Kate Moses, who spoke at such length from her own point of view, summarizing scenes and jokes from Lorrie’s books, that she left Moore no space to ruminate.
As audience member, I was most annoyed by Kate Moses. I did not care about her life, her kids, her tribulations as a mother, or her platitudes about motherhood. I came to hear Lorrie Moore. I did not like Kate’s obsequiesness, her transparent ego, or the fact that she introduced Moore as her new best friend, much less her continued attempts to prove it so. I came to hear Lorrie Moore and her thoughts about writing.
Jeanne’s audience—composed of about 25% writers, determined by a raising of hands—was openly curious about the author’s process, and entirely engaged. How did you manage to reconstruct those memories of yourself as such a young child? Jeanne gave the writer’s answer. Sat down with pen on paper. How long did it take to write the book? 13 years. Did you write it in order? Not at all. Just the kind of things I want to hear when another writer speaks.
I thought not to go negative in this blog, so let me say this. Lorrie Moore was funny, and likeable, polite, and friendly. She is a stellar writer, of significance, if sometimes a bit strong on simile and description. The Lannan Foundation is an organization that sponsors all kinds of writers in their work, and makes events like Lorrie Moore’s reading cheap. Six dollar seats on the floor of an ornate auditorium, you can’t beat that. I thank the Lannan Foundation, and am grateful for their support of the literary arts.
But their taste in sidekicks is questionable.
Kate Moses was not the first obnoxious interviewer hired by the Lannan Foundation. My husband and I went to hear Jimmy Santiago Baca’s dark and beautiful reading, but when interviewer Carolyn Forché began her ultra-long questions designed to show off her intelligence and familiarity with the author, her truly incisive understanding of his work, we left in annoyance.
For my money, I’ll take a local author with an earnest passion for writing speaking in a crowded bookstore. Maybe not everyone feels this way.
That’s just how I see it.
Why
In 1985, I started writing a novel. It became quickly apparent that I had no idea what I was doing. Where to start, who my characters were, even how to write a scene. All I had was an impetus to do it. I wanted it, I dreamed about it, I saw places in my mind, ancient places, watery places, Indian caves, all populated and alive with situation and drama. So I just started. And took classes. And met writers. And wrote and wrote and wrote. I stole time from my jobs and duties and family. I felt guilty at first. Later on, I didn’t. Later on, I knew that this is what I’m meant to do.
2010 marked the twenty fifth anniversary of that beginning, and now I find myself well-practiced in the craft, yet still yearning for the ephemeral depth of the art, the perfect succinct phrase, the words that slip together and say something beautiful, the dramatization of inner lives, the fruition of ideas, and the time to put it all down on paper. I measure that time in the decades I might have left in my life.
Once, I likened finishing a novel on a part-time schedule to getting a college degree taking one class a semester, instead of five. Graduation takes twenty years, instead of four. About right. Plus another five to mess around.
In these last twenty five years, I’ve done some messing around. I’ve also created a slow accumulation of work. A finished novel. Finished once, twice, ten times. Is it really? Can someone please tell me? Also a second novel, three hundred or more pages put down, with fragments of its trilogy tucked away in the drawers of my computer. A third of a third novel. Also stories, bunches of them, novellas, finished and un, and then there’s all that fairy stuff. Most of it loosely connected to some idea or theme, sprouting off in so many ungainly directions.
Pathetic, you say? All this writing and no readers? Sometimes, I think so.
Which is where I’m starting from. Excuse me. From whence, I start. These are the seeds of my desire and intention. My intention to be a published, paid, working novelist.
I’ve been trying already, and came up to what seems a wall. Then a little voice inside directed me to make public project of it, this daunting business of getting published. A Herculean task. An abyss to cross. The guardian to slay on the way to the innermost cave where the treasure is kept.
I know I’m not alone. Certainly those other 299 novelists who query the same agent as I do this week, and another one, next, know what I’m taking about. Those four hundred short stories submitted, for each one published by any worthy literary journal. Those $20 a pop contests. What are the costs in time and courage, and creativity? What circuitous route lies ahead? What I know for sure, is what my son tells me: I will not encounter someone on a street corner in New York who will say, “Hey, you look like a nice lady. I bet you’ve written a novel. How about I publish it for you?”
Hence this blog. I vow to make a sincere effort to investigate every publication possibility and to write about it, to listen about it. To be honest and diligent and to share. The Publication Project.
Thank you for listening.
Rejection 1 – The Death of Hope
- Waiting to Know
Rejection hurts because it means the death of hope.
Most writers have vivid imaginations, so when that manuscript or query letter goes out we tend to create a success story with ourselves as star. First place notification in that contest, a phone call from the editor or agent, publication, book sales in record numbers, the NY Times bestseller list, the big checks rolling in, the Movie, the second home in Hawaii, Oprah, the jet. Such commonplace dreams.
Ego? Human nature?
I believe hope (outside of love) is the best part of human nature because it brings the light into our eyes and sends us careening into the future. I’ve seen the faces at writers’ conferences, everyone lined up waiting to speak to that one person with the power to change their life. Publication, the holy grail. The dream grows as we talk to each other, innocents before the slaughter. We pat each other on the back, encouraging. What a great story idea, we say. I’d like to read that, we say. I like you. Good luck.
Hope is a balloon inflating. Hope rises all the way to heaven where the bright perfect future awaits us.
Whenever I receive a rejection, I run through a series of emotions, usually some combination of hurt and anger, frustration, and self-doubt. I get confused, I get knocked off my path, my God-given talent goes to waste. I am not good enough. On the other hand, I’m better than so and so who already has an agent/a book/a published story/a prize. That agent is stupid. That agent will be sorry. It’s not fair. Maybe I really have no talent. I reread the first page of my story and decide it sucks. Does my ambition even matter in the grand scheme of things? Is my life a total waste?
How long this lasts varies. A day, a few hours, a week. Does anybody out there just stop writing and not go on? Some do, I’m sure. For others it’s worse.
Martin Eden, the hero of Jack London’s novel by the same name endures years of rejections, only to commit suicide despite eventual publication and fame. Too late, his acclaim feels meaningless and false to him. He’s tired out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Eden
And me? I won’t give up yet. I love it too much. Too many ideas that want to come out onto the page. I bargain. I plead. I get a new whiff of hope. I write something. I send it out. I dream of ultimate success.
Until the next rejection comes.