by Charlotte Hinger
I'm building on Johnny D. Boggs's blog this week. He wrote about a series of seemingly bad breaks that were catalysts to better developments. He's at the top of his game today and a multiple award winning author. In every conceivable genre. Except songwriting, I think. This man has awesome credentials.
He's where he is today because he didn't quit. I've read a number of articles he's written about writing and at no point have I read that he considered quitting.
Once in a while when I give talks or presentations I come across a person who tells me they submitted a manuscript--either a book or a short story--once, and if they were rejected, they never sent it out again.
That's fatal, of course. Writing is no arena for the faint-hearted. Yet, I remember, I remember, when I was beginning, when my heart was in my throat, and my anxiety increased every hour while I waited for the postman. This was in the days when manuscripts were always mailed. I printed my books on pristine white paper of a certain weight and mailed them off in a double box manufactured especially for manuscripts. My labels were perfectly typed.
I decided it was the secret to eternal life. I couldn't imagine dying when I had a manuscript off to a publishing house. The suspense would keep me alive forever. This of course, was a lifetime ago, when editors always responded to submissions. Usually, negatively, and with a form rejection. But it was a response, nevertheless.
It was possible for editors to participate in this kind of courtesy because they were not inundated with the insane volume of submissions they deal with today. At the time my first novel was published, there were about 55,000 novels published a year in this country. With the invention of the internet and ebooks, self publishing has exploded and the annual tally of novels is close to four million. No wonder personal comments from editors are a thing of the past.
Nevertheless, this truth will always remain: those who succeed never quit.
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