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Well, a couple of days ago, I was pouting over the loss of 8 more of my articles. That’s right – 8. If you are a writer who has sent in printed out manuscripts to publishers, you probably know all about rejections notes and the blahs that hit you after you get one or ten. Even though most of my submissions have been accepted, the rejections hit hard.

At first, all you want to do is to stop “wasting” your time writing. Then you re-read the rejection making a mental list of the positives in it – is it a personal note? Is the signature a person’s handwriting or a typed thing, something like, From The Editorial Desk….? Did it mention the article or story by title? Did it use your name at the top? Is it actually dated? Yeses to a personal typed note, handwritten (rare but possible), your title included, your name mentioned with a date and/or a signature – are usually all little yeses of encouragement!

If your returned manuscript has any kind of writing on it, don’t curse the editor for ruining your manuscript copy! You can always print out another copy or go to the library and get a copy there. The editor has given you a very helpful gift if you want to “see” it! Any notes or corrections are little hints on how to make your manuscript better for that specific publication! It may even be a hint that if you do some re-writing, the editor might want to see it again! Or at the very least, it might be ready for another publisher.

Remember, just because an editor can’t use your article or story in their publication does not mean it isn’t right for some other publication or that it’s not a good piece. Sometimes it’s difficult to see past your own slant but each publication gears their content to a certain “audience” of readers. One of the major advantages you can give yourself is to read at least the last year’s worth of the publication if it’s a magazine of some kind or study the publisher’s recent list of publications if it is a book publisher. If it’s youth orientated, you won’t get a porn piece accepted – usually – raised eyebrow.

Also, if you submitted something 10 years ago, filed it away after receiving a rejection and then recently rediscovered it, now re-read it as though it was someone else’s manuscript and you are working for a publisher. Get seriously objective about it – your job is on the line here – accept a good piece or reject a not-so-good piece. If it still seems great to you, find a publication it could work in and do whatever re-write you need to do to make it REALLY fit the publication. Submit it again, hope for the best, and forget it. You might even be able to submit it online and save all those blasted postage and printing costs.

Sooooooooo to the jist of this post…..

eHow named me Featured Member of the Day on September 4, 2009. Talk about a surprise! Also, I have to take that as a big YES concerning my writing skills. After all, this is the second time eHow named me Featured Member. They also highlighted one of my articles at the very start of my time with them in 2008 but I was too – shall we say – new? Unaware? Dopey? – to realize that it was a big YES as well. In fact, I didn’t even know I had a featured article until a couple months later when one of my eHow friends mentioned it to me. I didn’t even take a moment to put a note in the article’s folder and now I don’t remember which one it was. Shrugs – at least it wasn’t the first and only time my work was highlighted.

Back to work now…. I have to identify those 8 articles and figure out what’s amiss.