What Is The Point?

My Blog Tonight… No Point…

I was going to write a blog tonight about something beginning writers do that I got three different notes about just in the last two days. One from a new professional writer who knows better, one from a full professional sending me a link that was funny, another was from a beginner asking me what I actually thought and how to do it.

The subject: Tracking Rejection Times.

So what do I actually think about doing that? I think it is just about the stupidest thing a writer can do.

And then it dawned on me (while I was writing back to one of the writers) that professional writers assume when we send something, the person we are sending it to will buy it. Rejections happen all the time, sure, but that is not why we send anyone a story. And we certainly would never think to track rejection times.

Newer writers send things out with the idea it will be rejected, and thus sabotage anything in the story to make sure it is rejected and then with that attitude it becomes important how long something takes to be rejected.

In other words, the reason it dawned on me that there was no point in even doing this blog is that the difference in professional writers and beginning writers is that beginning writers track rejections and professional writers expect things to sell.

Period.

So no blog to write.

A very simple way to tell the difference in my mind.

So when you finally graduate from tracking rejection times and start mailing out stuff with the expectation it will sell, you are a professional writer. Until then, please never mention rejection times to me in any context. I want to think of you fondly as a professional writers. Just better that way for both of us.