Up until two years ago, I thought I was one of the greatest fantasy fetish writers around. Well, not really, I've had hubris rammed down my throat enough times that I didn't think I was the “greatest” anything. But, I still considered myself one of the betters when it came to my stories. I mean, I got fan mail and art from my stories. And 40-90 hits a day on my website.
So, what changed two years ago?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I was in a rut.
I had been writing commissions for years and I had a small, but somewhat steady income. I posted a story every other month on my website. Occasionally, someone would comment on them.
The problem was that it never got better. My commissioned writing didn't really bring in more commissions beyond a set of very loyal commissioners (that I still cherish), but nothing beyond it. In some ways, commissions were a dead-end when it came to making my twenty-year hobby of writing into something more.
I decided that I needed to go beyond the tiny little niche that I carved out for myself. And that is scary.
I was like a straight-A student in grade school. I thought I was fantastic and wonderful because I was the best in my school. And then I went to high school and realized I was merely average (I graduated in the bottom quarter of my high school class). When I had a chance to go to an academy of science and art, I told myself I had a chance to get in.
I didn't.
College wasn't much better.
Trying to break out of my niche was much like the same thing. The fans I had wasn't enough to go beyond and I got rejected for not being a good writer. The last few years has done wonders to my inflated ego, but it also meant that I had to work that much harder to claw myself up.
I've gotten rejected a lot in the last two years. Sometimes, they were impersonal rejections and other times they were personal, but no less heart-breaking. When I was lucky, they would come with suggestions for improvement, but most of the time, they didn't.
Lately, the rejections have been less about lousy writing and more about “it just doesn't work.” This last week, I've gotten four of them including one response I've been waiting for almost two years. Having that come in as an impersonal rejection stung more than most.
Rejections don't stop me. I try to learn from each one, but I also don't let it hang around me. I usually just post stories that get rejected instead of trying to shop them around constantly. Each call for submissions gets a new story, mainly in hopes that I'll get it right the next time.
Even a two year rejection just means I'm going to try that much harder.