This is my corner o’ honesty, so we’re going to throw a little pity party.  Please stop at the ridiculous hat table on your way in.  Note the violins playing in the background, and feel free to sample the tasteless offering of dull food I had catered.  My feeling here is if I throw a party,  I’ll get it out of my system and be done with it.

Jaunty Party Hat

Yesterday, in an effort to get an update on the contest I entered and maybe find out what other people are saying, I came across a blog in which someone posted their entry.   I immediately felt my entry was crap, not having grasped the full humor and in-jokes of this particular piece of fan fiction.  As I admitted earlier, fan fiction isn’t really my thing anyway, but I did think I’d researched enough to get some good inside jokes in there.  Alas, not like this guy did.  Thinking my husband (who also entered a story) would read it and tell me I was delusional, I sent it on to him.  The story was very short, scraping the minimum word count, so it didn’t take him long to read.

Big mistake.  He too feels like shit now, thinking his story will be rejected as fast as I think mine will.

Ah, but that wasn’t enough for the universe.  Timing is everything.  In the short three minutes or so that I waited for him to read the story and get back to me, I received an e-mail from Strange Horizons informing me that my chupacabra story has not been chosen for publication.  That’s right, while stressing over a potentially imminent rejection of one piece, another got rejected.  The magazine’s website currently says they have responded to submissions up to those received April 11th.  Mine wasn’t even sent until May 4th, so isn’t it nice that mine sucked so badly they jumped me ahead of the queue to send me packing?  I must be a special brand of suckage to warrant special treatment.

And now I am feeling sorry for myself, having received a whopping three rejections on three pieces and expecting the next one any day.    I’m feeling like a poser who’s wasted her life.  I should have been an accountant.

Logic means nothing at the moment.  I know how ridiculous this is.  First of all, I’m a complete mathaphobic and dropped the accounting class I tried to take twenty years ago.   Being an accountant would not be a wise life choice for me under any circumstances.  Second, two of the dozen or so stories I’ve got sitting here have been rejected exactly once.  Also a poem was rejected.  I’m not a poet, so I’m not really sure why I care except that it adds to the rejection total — of three.  Three?  I need to get over myself.  Nobody sends out a few stories and gets one or more accepted the first time out of the chute.   Beating myself up over it is neither realistic nor productive.

I’m still going to stay here at my party for a little longer.  The low lighting is soothing and the tissue boxes are still full.  Besides, I’ve got a lot of work to do when the guests all go home.  I have a bunch of stories that need to go out.