Too much market research

We're always told as writers seeking publication that we must study the market.  We must identify where our work fits in before we start submitting it.  So we duly follow agents and editors on Twitter, read suitable blog posts, and get inundated with information on the publishing world.

We read tweets from publishers proudly proclaiming the launch of a marvellous new imprint.  Then we submit something to that marvellous new imprint and it's rejected, just like the others.  Ho hum.

Sometimes we have to withdraw from this hoopla, regroup, lick our wounds.  We have to get out of the media circus to allow us to continue believing in ourselves.  Because some days the gleeful announcements by authors of their book releases, the imprints publishing already best-selling authors, and the awards are just too much.

This hoopla is difficult to take when I and so many of my talented writing friends are still out in the cold. We're supposed to celebrate other writers' successes and be gracious in defeat.  But when we've had four short story rejections in the same day that's next to impossible.  We are humans and we do have emotions, and we are hurt, big time.  And going on Twitter and reading about others' successes just rubs salt in our wounds.

And then I remember that every present best selling author was at some time a nobody.  I go take a look at my lifeline, www.literaryrejections.com, and remind myself that an awful lot of today's best selling authors were also ignored and rejected for years.  I look at the tallies of 600 and 800 rejections these writers clocked up before selling a single thing and realise that nothing's changed.  People are fond of saying that it's harder to get published today, but these case studies show me that it isn't.  It's just always been hard.  And that I need to amass a lot more noes on the way to a the yes.

Ultimately there's only one thing to be done.  I have to withdraw from the social media circus, pick myself up, grow another layer of thick skin, and send the story out there again.

After all, I'm a writer, and I want other people to read my words, so there's no alternative to pitching back into the fray.