Not that I am ever “happy” to receive a rejection, but I have to admit that earlier this week I received a rejection that gave me a moment of relief. You see, I had (for whatever reason) taken a moment to read through a story that I had already sent to an editor. I pretty much never do this, but this time I did it. And about half way through I realized my brain had wandered.
So looked more closely, and decided it was flabby. It’s a short piece, but it needed to be shorter.
My first thought was “wow … if the editor takes it, I’ll have to ask for the ability do a bit of a rewrite,” which, admittedly seemed a little strange. I don’t like the idea of inferring that I hadn’t sent my best work. But, hey, I had pretty much decided that I would do that.
“Luckily,” I didn’t need to worry. The story came back with a very nice rection (if such a thing exists), and I literally breathed a sigh of relief, then proceeded earlier this morning to gently rewrite the piece so that the ending is a tad tighter, a tad slicker. And at the end of the day, I’m happy with it once again.
So, yeah. Being a writer is weird.