Acceptance and Rejection (all in the same week!)

I've been rejected and accepted all in the same week! I submitted a short piece to Marriage Partnership, a Christian magazine, and got my rejection email Thursday. Yesterday, I received an acceptance email from Fountain Pen, an e-zine. Granted, MP is bigger than Fountain Pen, but you know what? It doesn't seem to matter to my little heart - I felt the same amount of emotion with both emails. Utter despair ("I'll never be a writer!") and utter felicity ("Woo hoo! Someone likes what I wrote!").

I've been rejected plenty of times, writer-wise, so I reasoned with myself that it's just another war scar - the life of a writer. But, my self-esteem plummeted for an afternoon, all because of an email someone I don't know wrote to me, rejecting me with an industry-speak form letter. Then I thought, why am I being so reactive? So what if that piece didn't get accepted? I can submit it elsewhere if I so choose, and I think I will. It's amazing how someone else's reaction, or action, can affect me so much. This is my life, I should choose my emotions. I shouldn't just act on other people's emotions. (I didn't come up with these thoughts on my own -- they're partly Buddhist philosophy.) So, instead of equating myself with being a writing loser, I realize I just learned a lesson - now I know what MP doesn't like, and I can try again, learning from my mistake.

Oh, and if you'd like, you can read Fountain Pen by clicking on the link to the right. I think it's a good Web site that will continue to grow.