Gems Amongst the Dust - Lessons from the Slush Pile
I've been working on Deadly Vision for more years than I care to count, and received more rejection letters than you'd care to count, or would reasonably subject yourself to. But I believed in the story and knew that others would too, if I could only write it in a way that would capture their imaginations and attention. So I went to writing conferences, took classes, read many books, and constantly worked to improve my writing and my storytelling skills. But one surprising place that provided an immeasurable amount of guidance and information was rejection letters. In general, I never accepted rejection letters as a rejection of the story -- just where I was with it at that moment in time, with that particular agent. I even went so far as to file my rejection letters not in a file named "Rejections" but in one I named "Try Again." Once the story was better, they'd hear from me again, whether they wanted to or not. But before I filed...