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as saying that "bad" authors "are the ones who don't know, or can't remember, that publishing is a business."

If you can completely divorce yourself from your work you are probably psychotic and require heavy medication. Emotional involvement with your writing is essential and is what makes it meaningful to you. You will never be able to treat your own work with the impartiality that you would treat a Snickers and that's a good thing!

However, it means that every rejection will hurt and be a blow to your self-esteem. You can lessen the impact if you are prepared. One thing I do is make a list of possible markets for each of my poems, stories and novels. I am continually searching for markets; when I find a market that may be suitable for a particular piece of work, I add that market to my list. If one publisher rejects my work, I simply take the next market on the list, make up a new cover letter and send it off. I am prepared to take action in the face of rejection.

One final and extremely important step: if my work is rejected, I always reread it to make sure that it is the best that I can make it. I take a fresh look for clichs, stock characters, hackneyed phrases, flat metaphors, typos and other common mistakes. Only when I am satisfied that the writing lives and breathes and that it is my best work will I send it off, with a wish and a prayer, to the next market.

Learn more about this author, J. Goodman.
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