Submitting and fear

On Saturday night, I submitted my first short story in several months. And it scared me.  It still does.

I don’t remember feeling like this before – sure, I’d get nervous, but I was always reasonably unconcerned about whether it was picked up or not. Other places to submit, other stories to write…

Now, however, it’s different. I’ve been outed, you might say, as a writer. It has been publicly acknowledged by a major publisher that I can write. So much so, they’re publishing my trilogy. This seems to have brought to life in me a fear of failure. I’m a writer. People expect me to write. Therefore, I should be selling stories. Every story I send out should sell.

This is patently stupid. People who have been at this game longer than I, have more success than I, get rejected. It’s not a judgement of them as a writer – it’s that particularly person making a call on that particular story. It doesn’t work for them. It doesn’t suit the rest of the stories in the anthology. They just bought a very similar story and can’t afford to have two of them.

I’ve been on that side of the ledger. I know that it’s about that story, not the writer. I’ve rejected good writers. I’ve rejected good friends, because the story wasn’t right for what I was doing. It never had me thinking “well, I guess the other people who have published them are wrong, and they can’t write”. It was just about that story.

I need to remember that, and not get scared of rejection, and keep writing and submitting the stories I want to see out in the world.