Staying Human

Quote of the Day: "I'll make a beast out of myself, get rid of all the pain of being a man."
--Avenged Sevenfold, Bat Country
(Best. Title. Ever. Expect forthcoming story by that name. Seriously. I don't know what it will be about, but it will be awesome.)

*Note: Apologies for not posting yesterday, my computer started spitting errors about memory not being referenced at bla bla broken broken and I spent all night fixing it. Bah. Humbug.

I was originally going to put up a different quote from that song, but the one above just fits better with the theme of the blog today.

I sent out probably 100 rejection letters today. No joke. It was an interesting process because it became completely automated at some point. I scanned the offending query letter for pertinent details like name and address, completed the rejection letter, and put it in an ever-growing stack of "To-be-sent".

Usually when I send these things out I take the time to read a bit of the query letter. I'm genuinely interested in who this person is, what they wrote, how they structured their letter, and why they didn't make the cut. See my previous blog post about the manuscript from the wrong genre for proof.

But when I'm pumping through zillions of rejections all at once there just isn't time for that sort of thing, and it's easy to forget that this pile of paper in front of me represents someone's months and years of hard work, maybe even their lifelong dreams and ambitions.

It was a sobering realization, because I'd hate to think that at some point I'll forget what it's like to dream about getting published, either through working in publishing or by simply not trying to get published myself for too long. Maybe it's as important for publishers to moonlight as struggling authors as it is for struggling authors to moonlight as publishers. Something to discuss with the industry after I've succeeded at both, I suppose ;-p.

At any rate, I decided that someday, when I have a real job, I'll print out a little poster that says something along the lines of "Remember you are crushing dreams" and pin it to the wall of my cubicle. It should be a cheering reminder on bad days of the absurd power I wield, and a sobering reminder on good days that my rejection might be the worst thing somebody is going to get in the mail for a very long time.