“The Road goes ever on and on/Down from the door where it began/Now far ahead the Road has gone/And I must follow, if I can/Pursuing it with eager feet/Until it joins some larger way/Where many paths and errands meet/And whither then? I cannot say.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

So last week I got another rejection.  Bringing the total to three thus far.  

It is so much harder to keep going and trying than you can understand until you’ve been there.  I think about the people who get so many rejections before they publish, and I think to myself.  Those, are some bad ass motherf*****s.  The day of rejection three, I wanted to give up.  Submit.  What’s the point?  Then, I remind myself, the point is, if I don’t believe in myself, how can anyone else?  I know I am good enough.  I know my novel is good enough.  Still, I allowed myself one day of wallowing in self pity.  Then, the following evening, I got back to work.  I spent the largest part of my weekend submitting to nine more publishers.  And if I have to, I will again, and again, and again.  And if none of them accept my book, I’ll self-publish.  The point is I won’t, I can’t, give up.  This dream means too much.  

I’m thinking my biggest issue so far is that I was submitting under the wrong genre.  So…with that in mind I changed the genre and sought out publishers in that genre and sub-genre.  Why, the secrecy? The truth is, I want to keep my novel under wraps until the big reveal.  I’m not ready to share my novel just yet, especially since I may consider a bigger rewrite if a publisher requests.  Someday, I’ll do a post about all the things happening in the background, but until then, we will forage on forward, together.  

This road is not easy, nothing in my life has been easy.  I found confidence only after years of hating my reflection.  I found happiness after years of lying to myself.  I’ve found success by simply being myself in a world which would label me strange.  I found love in the most unexpected way.  Yet, all these things I found.  They did not come to me when I gave up, they came to me when I believed they would despite all evidence to the contrary.   I have been many things in my life, some I haven’t been proud of, but i have never been a quitter.  I’m too old to change that now.