For every author that makes it to the New York Times Bestseller List there are countless others that suffer in the Land of Rejection.  Writing is a hard, sometimes gut-wrenching, battle and it’s not for the fair of heart.  Of course, most of us wouldn’t stoop so low as to try this stunt I saw over at the Smart Bitches Blog: http://dianafox.livejournal.com/4789.html  

After I read this all I could think of is Wow.  Part of me was stunned at the sheer audacity of this person and yet another part felt a bit of pity for him too.  He must have been pretty desperate to actually fake an email.  I wonder how he thought he could get away with it?

Rejection is part of being an author.  Most of us can wallpaper our walls with those dreaded form letters. They can either make a writer more determined to go on or they will completely kill their motivation.  The choice of what they do is totally up to the writer receiving them. In my writer’s group we swap tales of rejections and take strength in one another’s support.  Others turn to their family or spouse for comfort.  Then there is always critique partners or other writer friends.

I’ll admit it’s easy to go off into the deep end of despair especially when you see something like this http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinion/07egan.html?_r=2&ref=opinion . (Thanks to Kelli Finger who forwarded this link to me.) To know that after you have been working for years, written thousands upon thousands of words, and faced almost as many rejection letters only to see some guy just waltz into a contract, it would make anybody see red. But remember this is an exception not the norm and most authors worked long and hard to get where they are.

So my advice to all authors out there is to keep going and not let the road bumps in life slow you down.

-Stephani