Comments on: Guest Blogger – Michele Lee

By: Nicole Cushing

Nicole Cushing — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:46:01 +0000

Right on, Michele! This is probably the hardest lesson I’ve learned. It can feel like tilting at windmills to keep on spending hours each day away from my husband and friends, writing, when I really haven’t made “dime one” from the endeavor.

But this is the hand I’ve been dealt. My experience is that I have “the bug”, and if you have “the bug”, there really is no choice but to write. Resistance if futile!

By: JodiLee

JodiLee — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:01:22 +0000

Just a quick comment on form rejections – some publications (such as The New Bedlam Project and Dead Bells) use form rejections and hold letters due to time constrictions. They are modified if necessary, with advice or suggestions for rewrites, but the base is a simple form letter.

Not all markets with any sort of decent turn around can take the time to crit each rejection or hold.

By: Kimberly Davis

Kimberly Davis — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:59:13 +0000

I enjoyed this post, and I think you are absolutely right about being patient. I have also personally found that the comments I get in response to submissions can be very helpful in telling where you are as a writer, even if the work isn’t accepted. Encouraging comments suggest you should keep trying. But if you are sending something out, and after much effort get only form rejections, that suggests either that the work isn’t in the ballpark, or–more often–that you are submitting to the wrong markets. For a writer, that’s valuable information.