Another Book Review and Thoughts on Rejection

First of all, my book was reviewed by Publishers Weekly. This time the review was all positive, so that was nice. Of course, it wasn't as positive as I thought it should be--not once did they mention that it's the Best. Book. EVER!!!! But overall I was happy with it. They did say my musk ox was megalomaniacal, which for some reason I thought was funny. Probably because it's such a funny word. It is true though. My musk ox is delusional about his own importance. That's what makes him such a fun and funny character. He was fun to write too.

One thing I've found interesting since I've started admitting to people that I like to write books is that there are a lot of people out there who dream of writing and publishing a book. And yet, not so many people actually do that. I think one reason is time. It's hard to sit down and write a book. It takes a lot of time. And then it takes more time to edit it. And then it takes even more time to send it out to publishers/agents.

But I think another reason why people don't get published is because it's so hard to deal with rejection. It gets really discouraging when you send out your manuscript and it comes back in its SASE with a form rejection. And after a few of those, people just get discouraged and stop trying.

I got lots of rejections. So many, I lost count long ago. But I kept writing and kept sending out stories and eventually I found some one who wanted to represent my story and she found some one who wanted to publish it. YAY!!!!

I kind of thought my worries about rejection would go away then. After all, I have an agent, I have a book deal.

But it doesn't! Now I'm worried about book reviewers rejecting my book. I'm worried about readers rejecting my book. I'm worried about publishers rejecting my future manuscripts. I'm worried about Goodreads and Amazon reviews. Gah! Sometimes I wonder why I wanted to get my book published in the first place. But at those times I just go to my bookshelf, pull my book off the shelf, hold it, and marvel that I wrote it. And then I know.