Day: June 10, 2007

I do a lot more writing when I let myself get bored. If I always fill all the spaces in my day with reading or watching shows or business thoughts, then I do not write. Writing happens when my hands are busy and my brain is not. Or when neither my hands nor my brain are busy. At those moments I feel an impulse to find something to do. But if I quell those impulses and instead turn my thoughts toward my stories, then my brain begins to work. That is when inspiration strikes. My brain starts sticking pieces together to see what works. I need to remember that boredom can be my friend.

There is a common wisdom among writers that you have to collect a certain number of rejections before you will get published. People almost seem to feel as if getting rejected is a rite of passage. I don’t feel that to be true. It isn’t the rejection that helps you, it is learning from mistakes. It is entirely possible to learn to be a good writer before you start submitting things. Rejections will probably still come, but they’re likely to be due to a mismatch between story and market rather than faults in the story itself. Which leads to another reason newbies get so many rejections. They don’t target their stories. They don’t meet and greet so that they don’t have to sit in slush piles totally unrecognized. I know that this shotgun approach works for many writers. They just write piles of stories and send them all out until people start recognizing their name and the stories start getting published. I’m not a shotgun writer. I’m more of an archer. I carefully craft and aim each arrow. And I’m content with small targets fairly close to home.