Never Give Up
Anyone who writes for publication knows it is a tough gig. You have to have the hide of a rhino, the stubbornness of a mule, and the persistence of a spider. I've been writing for a long time, I have a string of published work to my credit, but also a string of unpublished work that is doing the rounds, unsuccessfully. I saw a trend on twitter last year publishing stats for work sent out and work accepted. I started keeping track, and sent out over a hundred stories last year. Four were accepted and published. It's not a good ratio, and considering that my ambition is to write full time, it is not encouraging.
The last six months have also seen a period of disruption in my family life, which has made it much harder for me to find time to blog, and to write. Of course, there was also the need to earn the money to pay the bills, so I kept on with my day job. I persisted, and kept doing what I could, racking up the rejections. Apparently Einstein said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, expecting different results. It's a quote that is always with me, and I think about what to do differently - researching other markets; rewriting stories; different styles of writing; reading and learning about writing. But as the end of the year approached, I was once again asking myself why I keep trying. I must have a masochistic streak!
Roll on the following year, and in the first ten days, I had 3 stories accepted. "The journey" is now live on Pif Magazine, a prestigious literary e-zine; "Real or imagined" is due out in Commuter Lit next week and "Conversation in a Utopian Future" is due to be published in Antipodean SF in June. It's a great start to the year, and it's easy to be buoyed by this rash of success.
Apparently Thomas Edison failed a lot before creating the light bulb, and is quoted as saying "I haven't failed -- I've just found 10,000 that won't work." I'm not at the point of having tried 10 000 times yet, but there have been many.
Every writer has received rejections, (if you don't believe me, Google JK Rowling and Stephen King's rejections, along with any other authors you like!) and it's good to accept that you will too. Learn from them, move on, and above all, keep writing.