I have a good rejection/failure story ...
So I stopped the query party to go on a job interview last week. I got in there, was very qualified for the position (content management), and had what I thought was a successful interview about the job responsibilities, company strategy, my experience managing a large team of off-site writers, etc. So far, so good.
Then they gave me a "writing exercise," which I promptly failed. Basically, I blanked and couldn't come up with enough text, and what I did come up with was awful. I think what happened was a combination of (a) being nervous, (b) not knowing the product well enough yet to fake marketing copy, and (c) not being used to being watched while I write. I usually write at home or, when working full-time, was in a position that I had worked up to and felt comfortable at, so I didn't feel stress or blocked about deadlines. But there I was in a strange place, with a bunch of people waiting on me, stymied, with absolutely nothing to say. At a certain point, I just gave up and gave them what I had.
I give myself credit for not panicking on the spot, but I felt like I had failed.
So I walked out of there thinking how badly I had done, even though the sort of copywriting they tested me on isn't a big part of the job. I guess the good part of the trial is that it made me question whether I even wanted the job. So Depressing Factor #1 was failing. Depressing Factor #2: The Sequel was realizing that I probably don't want the job anyway.
By Thursday, I was feeling polly-wolly crappy and thinking that job-hunting is far worse than querying.
Meanwhile, a chorus of crickets sang in my mailbox. Bummed about the declining likelihood of finding work, I forgot about queries for FOUR full days ... until I got a reject on my only partial. It had a slight personalized tweak, but it's still a form reject. Sigh.
It reminded me to get back to querying, but before I could say "once is not enough," I got a snail-mail rejection on a submission I sent to a small press—a submission that they've already rejected. When I submitted in early March, I got a form rejection right away in the self-addressed envelope I gave them. So I'd written them off a full month ago. But then this week, I get ANOTHER form reject in a hand-addressed company envelope. That last part is weird because they explicitly say that they don't follow up if you don't provide a SASE. But then they bothered to use one of their own envelopes to reject me—AGAIN.
I had to laugh. Up and down. Up and down. Somehow, I counted that last one as an "up."
