Just as I was telling someone last night, I shouldn't take even an eventual "no" from an editor so hard. It's not the same thing as "failure"--it may just mean it's not the right place for a very good article. I remind myself that this is really all about God using me to get information to the people who need to read it. A series of "no" answers from editors could be just the path an article needs to take to get me to eventually send it to the right publication at the right time to reach whomever it needs to reach. Yes, that is just the sort of worldview I ascribe to--I was called to write, not just simply given the ability to learn how to do it. There's a purpose in what I do (if I keep communicating with God and endeavoring to follow his nudges).
It's happened once already where I think God wiped the stuff off my desk, figuratively speaking, and gave me the nudge to write a different article than the one I was working on. In a mere hour or so, I wrote--no, an article poured from me--and I sent it to a content website. I was trying to work on a serious article about problems in prenatal care, but instead I was interrupted by the strong impression that I needed to write about persistent cases of infant thrush. The turn-over time on publication was unusually fast. When it was published, I posted it on my facebook wall. That very day, a friend I knew in high school but have not seen in well over a decade messaged me on facebook, saying it was "totally a God thing" that I'd posted that article that day, because she was in throes of that very issue with her son. All I could say was, yeah--must have been a God thing!
That story is a good reminder to me when I think I'm not succeeding by my own terms and lost of goals. And when rejection discourages me. The definition of success isn't getting every article accepted the first time. No, if my purpose is to help people through my writing, inform the public on issues, and support peoples' experiences by writing words that will reach them in times of need, then I've got to get over disappointment when one editor of one magazine says o. Or even seven magazines. What I'm doing as a writer, if I'm really following God's lead, I believe, is about my writing getting to a particular audience at the most opportune time. I will never know all the times a rejection at one publication means I get it to another magazine that reaches someone in a profound way. But I remember that little story about the thrush baby as a symbol of what could be, and what always might be, going on all the time as I go about the business of writing and publishing. And that is success that matters.
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