Embracing Rejection -- Part Two
Embracing Rejection -- Part Two
Don't become a victim of your own success. But be sure you know what "success" actually is!
After a long spell in which I submitted nothing (see part one of this discussion), I began sending off my writing again. And almost immediately, I found an editor who wanted not one, but two of my poems. And the publication paid in actual dollars, not just copies!
And what does an author do when he or she finds this kind of success? Naturally, I questioned my judgment. Clearly I had aimed too low. Clearly there were greater things in store for me, and I only needed to reach for the stars. My biggest risk, I thought, is that I would sell my genius too cheaply. My work would appear in journals that were lesser lights in the literary universe, and these were not poems that belonged under a bushel basket in some university library.
And so, for a long while after that, I submitted only to the kinds of journals that I had once imagined beyond my reach, bu…
Don't become a victim of your own success. But be sure you know what "success" actually is!
After a long spell in which I submitted nothing (see part one of this discussion), I began sending off my writing again. And almost immediately, I found an editor who wanted not one, but two of my poems. And the publication paid in actual dollars, not just copies!
And what does an author do when he or she finds this kind of success? Naturally, I questioned my judgment. Clearly I had aimed too low. Clearly there were greater things in store for me, and I only needed to reach for the stars. My biggest risk, I thought, is that I would sell my genius too cheaply. My work would appear in journals that were lesser lights in the literary universe, and these were not poems that belonged under a bushel basket in some university library.
And so, for a long while after that, I submitted only to the kinds of journals that I had once imagined beyond my reach, bu…