Acceptance, both real and imagined

A little under two weeks ago, I wrote about rejection. Mostly around a rejection notice for a short story I’d received the day before. The real theme of the post, I suppose, was to accept rejection, learn from it, and move on. To not be defined by it.

Looking back on that now as a wiser, two-week-older person, I think that what I was trying to remind myself¹ was that the presence of a rejection letter in my writing life doesn’t, in any way, change my writing ability from one moment to the next. How I react to the letter can, but the letter itself doesn’t magically change my ability to write.

The same should be true of acceptance.

Not an easy lesson to learn, but I think I have in the last two weeks. I’ve kept on writing, learned a lesson or two and generally am back on track.

So imagine my surprise when acceptance came so quickly on the heels of rejection.

It was Sunday morning. I was just getting up from the dining room table when I saw this tweet on my phone:

“sometimes I read something and it just gets me right in the gut. @TheSatch is an awesome writer.” - Trula on Twitter

@TheSatch is my username on Twitter.

Now this made me feel pretty good. Partly because I, like all of us, don’t mind a compliment every now and again. But it also felt pretty good because of what it meant. More on that in a moment…

I took my phone into the bathroom where Sarah was brushing her teeth and held the phone up in front of her face so that she could read the tweet as well. Probably jarring to have a cell phone shoved in your face minutes after waking up, but Sarah was really excited. She’s my first-round editor after all.

After I shared the tweet with Sarah, I walked into the office and sat down at the computer, suspecting I might find a related email.

And I did. Also from Trula, the email informed me that my Short Story, “A Person of No Consequence,” has been accepted for publication in an upcoming anthology.

I was speechless. Well, maybe not. I think I was just grinning like a kid and saying wow to Sarah over and over again.

What can I say? I was, and still am, really, really excited.

I’m going to have a story published. And if it isn’t obvious by my reaction, this will be my first published short story…

That feels pretty cool.

What adds to the coolness of it is that this is the very story I was referring to in my last post when I mentioned that after reading it, Sarah said, “I can really tell that you’re becoming a better writer.”

What’s more, this story was an exercise in doing something new and different. Let me explain:

Trula Breckenridge is an indie writer that I’ve been following on Twitter for a while now. Several weeks ago, Trula mentioned that she was putting together a Sci-FI anthology. Intrigued, I took a look at the link she shared and saw that the theme of the anthology was “Futuristic Motherhood.” Basically, a book of speculative stories about motherhood. Culture, technology, etc.

I’ve never been an advocate of the “write what you know” adage, but this was a challenge beyond any story I’d written so far.

For one thing, I am not, nor will I ever be, a mother.

What’s more, Sarah and I don’t have any kids… yet.²

And yet I came up with an idea minutes later about a young couple dealing with a pre-parenting decision 100 years from now. It was fun, challenging, different (my first sci-fi story) and exciting.

And apparently, it was a decent story.

So, the book will be released in August and I expect everyone reading this to buy a copy. It would be cool to support this project and indie publishing in general, but I would love it if you’d read my story (and all the others of course) and let me know what you think about it. Mark, you said yourself that life is to short for anything but good sci-fi and fantasy, so I certainly hope you’ll check the book out.

If you want to pre-order, go here now. It’s a steal at $10.

Otherwise, I’ll remind you. Often.

So here’s to acceptance. And to allowing success to have the same positive impact that rejection does. That is, just like rejection, not allowing success to distort the lives we lead.

- Brandon

1. and also offer to others
2. Not yet mom. Soon enough

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