One of my stories got accepted!<\/p>\n
It’s the first one since I started doing the 100 Rejection Challenge (current stats: 22 subs\/queries, 12 rejections, 1 acceptance), and after all the weeks of doom and gloom it was a very welcome change!<\/p>\n
A story that I wrote while deep in depression in 2011, I’ve struggled to find a home for it. Called Music of the Spheres<\/em>, it’s about euthanasia and how a person can struggle with a decision even after their mind is made up. Most rejections were form ones, so I don’t know why it didn’t fit, but a few were personalized. One said: “A lovely premise with strong internal story elements. The prose is beautiful…. This piece really captures a moment and an experience. But in the end we’re following someone who has already made their mind up and follows through with their decision which isn’t quite enough- there’s no change<\/em> here” which is both lovely and a bit puzzling, since I felt like it missed the point of the story (the protagonist is revisiting her regrets, even as she knows she won’t change her mind).<\/p>\n The feedback was a bit depressing, as all rejections can be, but I decided to take away two lessons from it: 1) perhaps stories structured around an explicit change might sell better–something to keep in mind for future shorts and 2) how much do I want to tell the stories the way I want to tell them vs how much do I want to be sellable?<\/p>\n It’s a question very much on my mind as I query Creampuffs<\/em> and Ashes<\/em>. Both are novels that I wrote because I couldn’t find the niche I wanted to read; both are non-traditional formats (aka they don’t conform to the 3 act structure or anything remotely like that). A LOT of advice out there is about writing something that will SELL SELL SELL but most seem to want your book to follow a set of guidelines ripped out of screenwriting classes. I’m not interested in writing a gripping thriller with “constant rising action” (excuse me?). I don’t want to read about people “grappling with issues” all the time. I like reading stuff that feels like a sideways history: maybe it happened, maybe it could happen, but it’s messy and sometimes it’s just people running to keep up. Like life feels, but to someone who isn’t me.<\/p>\n Is this just my taste? According to the advice columns I read: yes. I am the outlier.<\/p>\n So my choice is rip out the seams of my stories and resew them to make them SELL or… to keep on swimming and hope someone eventually loves them as much as I do.<\/p>\n Music of the Spheres<\/em> took 6 and a half years to find a home. Would it have sold sooner or for more if I changed its point? Maybe? Maybe not. But it’ll be out there as it is (pending minor revisions) and as I intended it to be. That feels pretty good, especially after so much crud this winter.<\/p>\n Just gotta keep swimming and learn to accept that if I want to tell the stories my own way, it might take a while….<\/p>\n Check back in tomorrow for Clarissa\u00a0Goenawan’s guest post on Things I Wish People Would Ask Me At Parties promoting her debut novel!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my stories got accepted!<\/p>\n It’s the first one since I started doing the 100 Rejection Challenge, and after all the weeks of doom and gloom it is a very welcome change!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,8,9],"tags":[62,73,82,78,149],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-personal","category-productivity","category-writing","tag-rejectionchallenge","tag-acceptances","tag-ashes","tag-creampuffs","tag-music-of-the-spheres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":972,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions\/972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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