Rejections

I know what you must be thinking reading the title of today's post.  "Rejections, you don't even have a book yet, right?"

We've all done it at some point in our lives.  We have all put ourselves out there for one thing or another.  Willingly making ourselves vulnerable for our own benefit, to help another or even bring attention to something.  Chances are that you're going to end up getting rejected more often than not.

Maybe it's that new job you really wanted.  Maybe it was that cute guy at the coffee shop.  Maybe it was just wanting to be apart of something as you look in on it from the outside.  I'm sure everyone reading knows what I'm talking about.

I got my first writing rejection letter today.  It came in the form of a very pleasantly worded, generic, sorry-but-the-position-has-been-filled kind of email.

Here's the part of the blog where I blame Facebook.  Over on the right hand side of the window, Facebook suggests pages you should follow or friends you should have.  The friend suggestions seem to be a little out there for me.  I really don't need to know what my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate is up to these days, and just because we have one friend in common doesn't mean we know each other.  Thanks Facebook, but if I want more friends I'll go looking for them.

The pages, on the other hand, have always been pretty good for me.  All my suggestions seem to be centered around shoes and books.  :-)  Works for me!

So when a suggested page came up called Book Riot, I had to take a look.  Book Riot is a fantastic site.  It's full of contributing authors that write about all kinds of things all centered around reading.  I found this site around Thanksgiving time and had been reading the articles here and there.  Just like any magazine or newspaper, some of the articles I found very entertaining and some, well, not so much.

When I found that you could actually add their articles to your RSS feed I was hooked.  They post a lot more articles everyday than what they advertise on Facebook.

If you love to read you really should check their web page out!

Where was I?  Oh yeah, my rejection.

Anyway, after I had been reading their articles for a few months, and about a month after I started this blog, Book Riot put out a request for submissions.  They were looking for new contributing authors.  It also looked like they were trying to diversify their topics since they were looking for avid readers of Romance, Fantasy, Christian, Young Adult, and Crime and Mystery books among others.

This seemed like a really great way to get even more writing practice.  They were only looking for a 2 post a month commitment and to be willing to work with other Rioters (that's what they call all their writers!  Awesome huh?) on some group projects.

I thought this was great.  I could actually get paid to read books, write fun articles about them, get my work published and possibly even make a little extra spending cash (revenue share).  It took me about a week to decide what I was going to write in my submission articles.

I sent my little submissions out into the world, to have someone read something I wrote outside this blog.  It was a huge first step for me.

I though they handled it splendidly.  I got an email about a day after I submitted saying thanks and we'll be in touch.  Now all I had to do was wait.  Thankfully, in the meantime, I had all these great articles to read.

Today at work I was up to my eyeballs in stuff to get done, so I didn't really think much of my phone buzzing to tell me I had a new email.  As I was walking down the hallway I opened the email and began reading it before it even registered in my brain what it was I was reading.

As I mentioned before the email was very nice but it was very clear it was a mass email.  It stated they had over 440 people submit and that they have, at this time, filled all the positions.

So bummer, I wasn't going to be a contributing columnist for Book Riot.  Let me take a 5 second break so I can feel sorry for myself.   .   .   .   .

Ok.  Now that that's over I can get on with it!

I have read quite a few articles and interviews with current big time authors who talk about all the rejection letters they got in the beginning, or even still get today with some of their ideas.  I get that rejections are part of the process.

So bottom line, my first rejection letter didn't make me feel like I needed to pack it all up and forget about being a writer.... I know I was just as surprised as you at my reaction!

I really don't feel that badly about not being chosen this time around.  I will continue to follow the site and if they call for another round of submissions, I will join that one as well.

As I think about how well I am taking this I realized that what I gave over to Book Riot were two 500 word articles that I spent a few hours putting together over the course of about a week.  When I someday write the blog entry that talks about the first rejection letter I got for a book that I put my heart and soul and countless months into I might take it a little more personally.

But before that happens I actually have to get the thing written!  So thanks for not picking me for now, Book Riot, you've freed up a bunch of my time to focus on my own book.  But, someday, you might be sorry you didn't scoop me up when you had the chance ;-)