Submission Blues

You've worked hard. You've written the best story you can and you've gone over it with a fine toothed comb making sure it's perfect. Finally it's time to submit it. You have the cover letter perfect and a synopsis that you fought with for hours because it's so dang hard to condense a novel into just a few pages. The blurb is done. The email is open. One last formatting check before you attach your file and then you're ready. Does the arrow hover over the send button? Is it a close your eyes and let the gods take it from here?

It happens to me every time I finish a story and get ready to submit it. I read over it twice, three times or sometimes more just to make sure it's where I want it to be when I finally submit it to a publisher. It always seems to take at least ten minutes for me to talk myself into sending that submission. No matter what the story and I know that when I do send it in the waiting game starts.

I call it submission blues and while its a part of the crazy life of a writer I can't say it's one of the better parts. It's almost an adrenalin rush but not as fun. I've sent in countless submissions and gotten countless rejections. That's also part of the craziness. I file rejections away until I have a small stack. Once that stack is tall enough I pour a glass of wine and light a match. It's a nice way to deal with the rejected feeling. I hold nothing against the publishers. They did their job and if my story wasn't a fit for them then it wasn't the right publisher.

Submission blues, however, aren't so easy to deal with. I don't know if the story will be accepted or not. Will the editor love the characters the way I do? Probably not, but just enough love is good enough. Those characters will be honed and edited and in the end they'll grow even more than they did while I was writing them.

Moving on from the blues I'm going to try to focus on another story. Don't ask me witch one because right now they're fighting for attention. For tonight I'm going to enjoy a glass of wine and share a toast with the characters that have been mooching off my brain for the last year.

Peace and love.