Today was a momentous occasion for me. I confirmed that I did not, in fact, win a
competition to which I submitted my writing.
I didn’t actually receive a rejection (which complaint is another blog
post entirely) but I have failed, and therefore I have taken another step
closer to the honored society of true writers.
This sounds
a little sad, but it’s true: writers fail.
All the time. There are all sorts
of stories out there about famous authors who sent out their now-famous works—Harry Potter, A Wrinkle in Time, etc.—to
six or seven or twenty-seven publishers before finally receiving an
answer. And there are hundreds, I’m
sure, whose stories don’t have that happy ending, who give up after they have
enough rejections to paper their walls.
Rejections and failures are the marks of a writer.
I, however,
hope to show off my rejections like cool scars, because a failure means I
tried. At the very least, I’m out there
and I’m putting my writing out there, and I have a chance to learn from every
mistake I make. So in my “submissions”
spreadsheet, under the column of success, I have proudly written “epic fail”
next to the contest I entered. I hope to
see many, many more such entries in the future.
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