I'm back! well at least for now. I have been in a bit of a slump for the past few months. Despite my posts on perseverance and pushing through the adversity, I found myself feeling really mentally drained.
On paper , I had no reason to feel the way I did. In 2021 so far I had eight requests for additional manuscripts - that should be a reason to celebrate but when six of those ultimately ended in rejections the self-doubt began to creep in again. I wondered if I had already written the best story I could ever write and if that was true and it was so easily rejected on numerous occasions then maybe this writing life wasn't for me.
For months the ideas just weren't there. I celebrated on the sidelines for all my writing friends who got their agent but secretly thought it was never going to happen for me. So I focused on other forms of self care. I took up reading again, actual reading vs audiobooks. I read more than sixty books and also began to be more active in a discord group where we share our writing successes and failures.
Slowly the ideas came back to me and I began writing again. I plan on taking it slow this time though. You may recall I said six out of the eight requests ended in rejections and maybe you're curious about the other two.
Well the jury's still out on those. One of them actually came from a rejection. It was a pitch event I attended a few months ago. I was invited to submit some stories to an agent. She sent me an email with a rejection...but it she went beyond to explain why she had to pass. She told me she enjoyed my work and unfortunately she had to be extremely selective based on current her list but she offered me a referral to a colleague who was building hers. I sent out that query and received a request for more work in a few hours. So even if these two also end in rejections , it's the reminder I needed to not give up and yours too.