An update on my writing

I'm a little behind on my assignments still. It feels like once I catch up then something big happens that prevents me from working on it for a week or two and I get waaaayyyyy behind. Just about everyone that has read what I've written has encouraging things to say as well as some criticism. What's most discouraging about writing is it's sooooo hard to get things published. With that said let me say this, I could pay just about any publishing company to publish my book. What's so difficult is the marketing. I may have a book published but that doesn't mean stores are going to sell it. I'd have to contact book stores in order to sell it and then I'd have to convince them my book is worth taking space up on their shelves. I feel like everything I read from professional writers or agents/editors is negative news. I even have a link on this blog to a literary agents blog and I've recently stopped reading it. I feel like it's the same thing...."it takes a lot of work and the odds of someone accepting your manuscript are pretty low."To me it's all discouraging. I don't want to try and cover up the reality of it but I also don't want to be so bombarded with negative information I just give up.

Anyway, I sent two manuscripts off to a well-known Christian children's magazine, Clubhouse. It's published by Focus on the Family. One story was a short historical fiction account of a child who lived through the Dust Bowl, a period I have a lot of interest in. The other was the Fish and Loaves bible story told from the viewpoint of the little boy who supplied the food to Jesus. This boy is only mentioned in the gospel of John. I felt confident in my stories, that they were well written and met the interests of the audience I had intended them for. However, I was not confident in their acceptance by the magazine. First of all because it was my first time submitting actual manuscripts and I highly doubt I did everything perfectly. Unfortunately, they don't give you feedback on technical mistakes. Second, this is a fairly popular magazine so I imagine there are A LOT of submissions; competition was high. About 6 weeks after sending them I received a letter in the mail giving me the news. It took me a while to figure out what the envelopes had in them and why I was getting and then I remembered I had sent some self-addressed envelopes with my manuscripts. My heart skipped a few beats as I realized this could be a turning point in my early writing career or it could be the start of my many rejection letters. It was the latter.

I was disappointed, sure. But like I've said so many times before I expected to be rejected, so I got over the disappointment shortly thereafter and decided I could now look for other publications to submit to. One piece of good news in all this is on the rejection letter, which was more of a check list of reasons they were not accepting it, they had simply checked that my stories did not fit their editorial needs at the time. I then scanned the other options and realized my news wasn't so bad. Other options could have been checked, indicating my manuscript was not up to par or needed a lot of work, thankfully it was just that my stories did not fit what they were working on at the time. I did look up their needs and requirements on their website and while my stories fit that particular list, I realize the website could be outdated. One other piece of information on the rejection letter was the magazine receives 75 submissions a month and only accepts 4 a year! The odds are pretty low. Had I'd seen that on the website when I was looking for their requirements I probably would have not sent my manuscripts in.

I'm glad I took the risk of sending my stories off. It's not as scary or as difficult as it seems. I now need to find some other publications who may take my stories and keep writing. I just need to keep writing.