Yeah, I have enough arrogance to refer to myself as a writer. A hack writer, to be sure, but a writer nonetheless.
To me, a writer is someone who writes. Who needs to write. However, a published writer is something else. The main difference between being a writer & a published writer is really based on one thing: persistence.
Of course, to be a published writer, one must actually attempt to have something published.
I wrote…I edited…then I wrote again. And again. Eventually, I managed to grow a pair & send off a couple of short story submissions to a magazine in an attempt to elevate my rank from “hack writer” to “published writer”.
As to be expected, within a matter of days, I received my first rejection! Imagine my delight when I opened my mail to find “Thank you for your short story submissions to Underground Voices. Regretfully, we have to pass, but all the best with them.”
I am now well on my way. This begins what will hopefully be the first in a long series of rejection letters.
Why am I happy about this? Well, it’s really quite simple. It’s inevitable that one would receive a slew of rejections before getting a letter of acceptance. Any successful writer, musician or artist of any kind can tell you that rejections come with the territory.
I’ve got that first rejection out of the way. I’m that much closer to that letter of acceptance, now. If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is.
[tags]Writer, Writing, Published, Rejection, Acceptance[/tags]
A drawer full? Yikes! Well, at least I’ve started on my rejection drawer. 🙂
Cool…I’m glad the feed is working – I’ve addeds yours, too.
Yup, you are on the way! I still have a drawer full of rejections from the many indy magazines I would send my fiction to. I also managed to be accepted in several that never quite got as far as publishing, and published in one that never got the fact that I was using a pen name and used my married name.
I finally got to add your feed 🙂