I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about rejection, considering I have so very little in my life. I don’t date (which works well with the whole being-married thing), I’m not out of work and looking for a job (I’m self-employed), I don’t compete in sports, politics or even the lottery. And yet, surveying a bunch of long e-mail threads I’ve had with people in 2009, I see a few subjects popping up again and again. The top 9 are:

9. God

8. Marriage

7. Beauty

6. Age

5. Parenting

4. Money

3. Politics

2. Time

1. Rejections

Yes, the greatest of these was Rejection.

Why?

Well, because I’m a writer. Now, I know there are lots of writers who never ever get rejections –they never submit anything. And I’m sure there have even been some blessed souls who submitted their work and sold it with nary a rejection (before their fellow writers lashed them naked to trees and peeled the skin from their bodies with clam shells, all the while telling each other how very happy we are for their success).

But most of us get our stories rejected. WE get rejected. If you think it doesn’t feel like the same thing, then you’ve never experienced the maddening schizophrenia that comes with the creative brain. Part of our brains always expects Stephenie Meyer-level success. The other part girds its loins (brain loins!) against the onslaught of criticism, belittling, and possible violence sure to come from anyone who sees us attempting to do something so obviously above the level of our meager abilities.

For someone like me, someone who is not naturally imbued with grace and aplomb, rejection is a bitch. She whispers the worst insults in my ear while raising a 2×4 behind my head. And as soon as she’s run out of heart-deadening half-truths to release into my ear like those awful creatures in Star Trek, she raises that board to bludgeon the rest of my ego free of my body. It’d be easier to split me open like an overripe cantaloupe and watch the seeds of inspiration fly chaotically to the dirt.

But I am determined to be a writer. The kind of determined that has stripped most of my ego off in slick strips I can make into shoes to keep me walking onward. My determination is fed by continuous hunger to try to fill all those gaps I can see between the stories in my mind and my ability to bring a story to the page. My determination is massive and undying.

So the only way I’ve been able to keep myself going through hundreds of rejections for my handful of sales is to change how I see rejection. Sure, there’s some delusion in here. A dash of denial. Some whimsy and naiveté dance above the scales that weight my rejections and acceptances. There’s tricks of work and tricks of the mind and tricks of the industry that I juggle when I can. And when I can’t juggle, I drop everything and break out into a scuffy little dance to draw the eyes away from my failures.

All this brings me to 9 ways I’ve come to think about rejection.

1. It’s the same as having an envelope stamped Return to Sender: Address Unknown. I just sent the wrong piece to the wrong person at the wrong time.
2. It’s a timing thing. Maybe they just got the same sort of story submitted by someone whose name alone sells copies. It’s not that my story is bad, just that my name is not well known. Yet.
3. Maybe the editor had a very bad day and can’t see brilliance of any sort. I know I’ve had days when even a sunset pissed me off.
4. The story is destined for better. If I’d sold some of my stories to the first place I sent them I would’ve missed out on greater sales later.
5. Maybe I’m not ready for success yet. I’ll just keep sending stories out while I continue to work on making myself a better person, the kind of person who can at least fake grace and aplomb in the face of good reviews and awards.
6. My karma’s getting dingy. Time to try to help and support other writers.
7. I need rejections to keep balancing the scales I see in my head. Only when there are enough rejections to tip the scales will I achieve a sale.
8. The editor is biased against … (insert ridiculous reason here: women, Nevadans, freelancers, bloggers).
9. The editor is obviously just irretrievably stupid.

Keep in mind I’ve been an editor (nonfiction, though), so I can safely say almost any of these reasons could be true (except 9. I’ve never met a truly stupid editor). And I do actually know that even given these comforting stories I tell myself, it’s still possible that my story simply sucked. But I can’t really know why a story is rejected. And I’m not capable of judging the suckage of my own work any more than I can see anything but brilliance and charm in my son.

So regardless of the reason for rejection, all I can do is keep sending the work out.

Everything else is just me telling myself stories.

Regardless of what the rest of the world is thinking about as 2009 slips into 2010, writer goals never seem to change. Your neighbor wants to lose weight, your cousin is determined to get out of debt, your friend will get married if it kills her. But writers? While there are many variations, most of our resolutions come down to one thing: selling. Selling a short story, selling a novel, selling an essay, an article, a memoir, a poem. I have had selling a novel on my New Year’s list for decades, even before I had written anything (hey, someone could just hear about my wonderfulness and back a truck of cash up to my house, right? Any day now.) But I’ve learned a lot in the last 14 months, some of which I’ve managed to put into use. Some I’m still working on.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned (Thanks, Kris and Dean!) is the difference between what I want and what I can control. I still want to sell a novel. But that’s not my goal, because I can’t entirely control that. What I can control is 1) how much I write, 2) the quality of that writing, and 3) how much and how often I submit for publication. The actual selling? That’s up to the folks with the checks. In the final analysis, only editors control whether or not I sell a piece.

1)      How much I write: 16 months ago, I swore I couldn’t write more than 500 words a day because I hadn’t. I even had doubts I could do that, considering how long it had been since I had. But a two-week workshop blew that belief out of the water. At the beginning of 2009 I wrote a novel – Beach Bitches. I wrote at least 1,000 words a day every day until it was done (around three months). So now I know I can do that. And it wasn’t even hard. It usually took only around an hour each day (night, in my case). I never missed a day, no matter how complicated or dramatic life got. No matter if I was sick or my son was home or my husband was out of town or I had a tight deadline with the paying work. Sometimes I didn’t start my 1,000 words until midnight or 1 a.m. Most days I had no idea what I was going to write, where my story was going to go. As soon as I decided there would be no acceptable excuses for not doing my 1,000 words, the writing came easily.

2)      The quality of my writing: I’ve learned that I can’t judge the quality of my own work. Sometimes, what I think sucks sells. Sometimes, what I think is wonderful doesn’t. But I still work on the quality – not on the level of rewriting and rewriting and rewriting one story, but on the level of constantly trying to learn more as a writer. I read more carefully, I research and take workshops about things I know give me trouble, and I practice those elements. For example, I knew plot was a weak point for me, so I wrote a mystery novel. Now I will try to sell that practice.

3)      How much and how often I submit: This is my weakness. I know no one can buy my work if they don’t see it. I know I can’t judge my own work, but I still find myself hesitant to send out certain stories. I have a great, well-organized submission routine. But I don’t do it. I’m not sure why yet, but I suspect it’s a fear of success sort of thing combined with the fear that once I commit something to the mail I’ve lost any hope of bridging that awful space between the story in my mind and the story on the page.

So, in light of these three realities, these are my goals for 2010. They are modest, I know.

1. Fix all the holes in Beach Bitches. Things like making that one secondary character a girl all the way through (right now, she’s a boy in the first half of the book), giving characters names that don’t all rhyme or start with the same letter, taking out one of the two nearly identical characters, and having the clues come from the characters rather than out of the blue or through newspapers or police.
2. Practice information flow by writing a book with a complicated flow. I started this book, but it fell apart down under the weight of my inability. So now I will start over in a new way with what I’ve learned from that version. This “practice” means writing at least 1,000 words per day. Then I have an oldish draft of a book whose scenes I like very much like but which never gelled into a book. With what I’ve learned in the last year, I’m ready to take a new run at it –primarily just cutting about 2/3 or it. Both these books will be finished and submitted by this time next year. I will also continue to learn about the industry and stay abreast of its changes, challenges and opportunities.
3. How much and how often I submit: I will focus on the why of my not submitting and then submit anyway. I’m thinking three stories (or proposals) a week is good for now, as I run the learning curve of compiling a list of where to submit. Once the finding of markets becomes less complicated and the submission of three stories becomes a habit, my psyche is out of the game. At that point, I can increase the amount I submit each week. I’d like to be up to 10 a week by the end of 2010.

And since I absolutely need someone to report to in order to keep myself from cheating, I will continue to use the gracious support of the infamous Des. We make goals every week and she checks in to see if we met our goals or not. If we do, we cheer. If we don’t we discuss what happened and then reboot for the next week.

The more I learn about writing, the harder it is. Back when I knew nothing, I would just leap to the page in joy. I created with unabashed passion. I had no critical brain, only creative.

Now, I can still tap into that creativity but it’s hard for me to stay there. My critical brain is always looking over my shoulder, asking questions:

“Does that advance your story?”

“Could you be less expository?”

“Is that the character or are you on your soapbox?”

“Is that the right word?”

“Could this passage serve more than one purpose?”

“Who talks like that?”

These are all good questions, and they need to be asked. Critical brain has improved my final product greatly. The problem is that critical brain keeps jumping in the middle of my playtime and kicking sand in the face of my creative brain. Critical brain is a bully. Creative brain has an inferiority complex. Not a good combo.

The result is my seeming inability to get my stories out the door.

It’s taken me a very long time to start to be able to see how critical brain can improve my writing. I rejected her for so long she learned to be awfully passive aggressive. But she does have her purpose. She’s got my back in a foxhole. She makes sure I don’t leave the proverbial house with proverbial toilet paper stuck to my proverbial shoe. But when I just want to hang out and create, she’s kind of a pushy bitch.

I’ve tried distracting her, kicking her out of my office, bullying her, even giving her free reign. But she is singular in purpose, digging in her heels while creative brain goes off flitting after lightning bugs. So I’ve found bigger guns.

My writing life now is filled with a complicated set of sticks and carrots. Critical brain loves rewards, but even more, she hates to be punished. And I’ve found some great ways to keep her in line. Actually, my friend Désirée has found some great ways of keeping critical brain in line. Désirée kicks my critical brain’s ass.

I met Des at a workshop in Squaw Valley years ago. She’s from Southern California and loves Lake Tahoe. I live near it and never go there. We both wanted to get away and just be writers once in awhile. So we cooked up a plan to rent a cabin at Tahoe for a weekend and work out plots of the books we were stalled on. We did, and it was wonderful. We went again the next year but without real goals. It was still wonderful, but not as constructive. So we made a bet.

I needed to rewrite a book. I didn’t need to fiddle; I needed to cut out large chunks and rearrange what remained. But every time I opened the file I started tweaking language instead. And I was making the language worse. In this book, creative brain had done her job on a first draft with verve and style. Critical brain wanted to rein her in. Bad brain.

Des suggested that we have our works-in-progress rewritten by the time we met again in May. Plenty of time. If I didn’t? I had to write a painfully large check to a politician I deeply despised. Not only would it suck to fork over the money, but the check register would permanently remind me that I helped that person.

In typical Cindie fashion I waited until the last minute. Then I got sick. Had there not been that stick hanging over me I would’ve blown it off. But there was no way I was writing that check. And there was no way I was going to Tahoe as a welcher. The only way to bring an end to the tweaking and avoidance was to just finish the book, critical brain be damned. Come May, I showed up at the airport to pick up Des and drive to Tahoe with a complete book.

The following year we challenged each other to start and finish books before our return to Tahoe. The reward for this productivity was an extra day at the Lake. We met our goals and spent the weekend critiquing and brainstorming and writing (and eating and drinking and marveling at the beauty of the Lake right outside our window. Seriously, there is much marveling with us). That extra day was heavenly. We plan to do it again this coming year because we will have new manuscripts done by then.

Now we have smaller goals as well, goals designed to help us write more than one book a year and, more importantly for me, finally send them somewhere. We set weekly goals. We check in on our progress. And need be, Des will find another big-ass stick with which to threaten critical brain.

(One of my weekly goals is to write and post a new blog entry every Wednesday. I have a cold. I feel … not well. But I know Des is going to check in with me come Monday. So I’m sitting here writing while hopped up on cold pills. Critical brain is quiet. Maybe drugging her into oblivion is another stick. Or carrot.)

1. Handwritten (or personal e-mail) note asking you to submit more
2. Personal scribble (or added line on an e-mail) on a form rejection asking you to submit more
3. Note with critique but not asking you to resubmit
4. Handwritten note (or personal e-mail) saying he/she likes your work
5. Personal scribble (or added line on an e-mail) on a form rejection saying he/she likes your work
6. Notification that your work is wonderful but the market has died
7. A request that you not send more work because you don’t understand the market
8. A request that you not send more work until you learn enough to be ready to submit
9. A note (or added line on an e-mail) on a form rejection with vitriolic rejection of your writing ability, subject matter or style
10. A note (or added line on an e-mail) insulting you personally
11. Form rejection letter (or e-mail)
12. Web link to a spreadsheet with the word “decline” beside your name
13. A red NO scribbled on your query letter
14. A red NO scribbled on someone else’s query letter
15. A red NO scribbled on a query letter you sent, but not to that person
16. Just your query letter
17. Your query letter stained with what you hope is coffee
18. Your empty SASE
19. Silence