It’s kind of weird – I thought I was immune. I’ve heard about other writers who, when they complete a story, discover they have trouble submitting it anywhere. The fear of rejection makes them nervous, thus making it difficult to send the story out in the first place. Some writers, I’m told, never get past that obstacle. I always scoffed, thinking to myself that if you never take the risk and submit the story, you’ll never really get started. I figured that I would probably never have trouble submitting stories of my own, once the time came.
I’m discovering, though, that the fear is, indeed, there. Granted, I’ve already submitted my first story and been rejected. Of course, this doesn’t really make it any easier to submit again, despite the fact that I knew it would have to be extraordinarily stellar writing in order for my first work to get accepted anywhere. Now, I have these visions in my head of the editors laughing as they read my story, mocking it and making fun of it, shaking their heads with tears of laughter streaming down their faces as they wonder why any writer as pathetically bad as me would ever imagine I might be able to get published. I picture them sending that rejection letter back to me with glee as they pronounce my story doomed, having fed it to some firy hellbeast, such being the horror of the work I produced.
Then again, I’ve always had an active imagination – both my greatest ally and my greatest adversary. The very thing that provides me my story ideas is the thing that makes it so easy for me to visualize my failure.
I’m actually very eager to submit another story somewhere, but I’m also nervous about the proposal of doing so. Story #2 is in its first draft form, and I still face the daunting task of figuring out where I should send it, once the final draft is complete. I’d love to submit it to the same place that Story #1 went – it’s a fantastic magazine – but fear says that the editors will see my name on it and trash it out of hand, without ever reading it, because they might remember how bad the first was. In actuality, they will probably be lucky to remember my name, given the number of stories in the slush pile they must read each month. Still, the prospect of submitting is a bit frightful, and there are lots of places out there that might be willing to give a new writer a fair chance. Guess I’ll just have to try a few out.