The problem with not dealing with rejections right away is that eventually you end up with a lot of rejections in your inbox. I have three currently. The latest one "came close", which is nice; I haven't gotten an almost since I got back in the submitting saddle, and I was beginning to fear the hiatus had broken whatever concatenation of random factors had been getting me on short lists before.
Mind you, close-but-no is still a no.
--No, wait, make that four Rs. Ironically, just last night I was looking at this story and thinking, "If it comes back from Market X within their stated response time, I can send it to Market Y before deadline." And here it is. Never let it be said the writing gods don't have a sense of humor. But at least I know where to send this one next.
~ ~ ~
Lots of R cookies to spread around, to Theodore, Taylor, RJDrake, Belle_91, and anybody else who needs 'em.
utesfanami - Cheers on the light-bulb moment, and on the requests! It's so nice when you get even a little bit of feedback that you can *do* something with, isn't it?
RJDrake - Good luck on the trimming.
The hard part is knowing which words go where.
Quoting that one because it is so very, very true.
triceretops - Sympathies. Few things make you want to bang your skull against the desk like the book that just won't go, and won't even tell you why not. Do you have access to a savvy kid of the right age range, who could read some of what you've got and tell you what it sounds like to them?
Belle_91 - How was your date? (Assuming you went.)
RLGreenleaf - I've been somewhere similar; there's a sprawling saga of a novel I started in college, that I revisit every once in a while thinking maybe I should actually finish it... and usually end up putting down and going to work on something else, very far away. The angst-ridden characters that were compelling to me then are frequently annoying to me now, and let's not even get into the other issues. And yet, there's a thread there that keeps drawing me back....
This thing will probably never get finished, and maybe that's just as well. But when I have managed to do some new work on it, it's usually in the wee hours of the morning. Apparently angst is more palatable at 3:00 a.m. Is there something you can do to put yourself in a more compatible mood with the "state of mind" of the existing stories? Time of day, listening to certain music, working in a different location, whatever? Something that resonates to the person you were then, but isn't entirely alien to the person you are now?
There was a convention panel about long-running series that said that it's almost like a collaboration: the writer you are now has to work with the writer you were when you started, and those may be two very different people. Would thinking of it like collaborating with an old friend be any help?
Or, you could try to incorporate your new state of mind, and do something on a thematic level with the growth and change from one to the other. Might be tricky to pull off without giving the collection a split personality, but might be nifty if it worked.
Going on the date is something to get excited about, so maybe it'll lift your mood?
