When The Molehill Becomes A Mountain

Rejection is part of the process of writing, but it’s never easy. Experienced authors claim you get used to it, accept it as a normal step in growing your writing career. There are times, however, when all those No’s grow from molehills into mountains, when you think you can’t make one more pass at that brass ring. That’s what this summer of 2024 resembles in my own work.

Full disclosure, I’ve concentrated more on producing new writing than on sending out work, so the handful of negative responses don’t equal an avalanche. Hope does resurrect itself repeatedly, until the voice of the demon inside rings louder than the strong, resilient creative that I am is overwhelmed.

Here, on the cusp of summer’s sweet August, I sometimes find it difficult to struggle on. Then I remember what I told my teams when I coached, the mantra that the young woman who won two state championships under my leadership lived by: Grind It Out! You can’t win every skirmish. There are battles still to come. Don’t allow the negative to erase what you have already achieved, even if that achievement is simply sitting down and putting 250 words on the page. Grind. It. Out.

Among my readings this summer is the book Bloodchild and Other Stories by Olivia Butler. In the small tome, she included two essays about her struggle to be accepted as a science fiction writer. Her rejections took a toll, but she refused to be silenced, kept on sending out those stories, and threw the rejections away when they arrived. She persevered and became, ultimately, one of the most celebrated S-F authors who ever wrote.

Moral of this blog: I’m telling myself to stay strong. I’m challenging myself to stay true to the creative energy that resides inside me, to honor that writer with her feet on the land and her head in the stars. One foot in front of the other on this course I have charted. Every platitude is there for a reason. Grind it out!.