Sending items out means getting an acceptance or rejection. Sometimes this is too much for writers to take, the waiting and the not knowing and most of all wondering if the writing is good enough.

Good enough is a troublesome concept. It’s not just whether or not a piece is well-written. There are so many things to take into consideration, like the overall market and whether or not the editor likes it. Then when the rejection comes through, you wonder if you’d just worked a little harder, made just one little change, if it would have been okay.

I can’t be the only one wondering these things. I don’t let it stop me from sending things out. I aim high. I get rejected. I try not to let it get to me. It’s not easy.

This time I got lucky, or I just had a great fit with The Storm is Coming anthology.

My story, The Rescuers, is one I wrote a time ago, but it always sounded like Chapter 3 in a novel. I needed time to focus it into something much better. It happens that way sometimes, when you have a good premise but the writing doesn’t quite follow through on the promise.

It helps to not give up on yourself or the story that needs to be told. Sometimes that short story has to be made into a novel, but other times it can work if other pieces are different. I throw out a lot of rough drafts, and some of them I tweak endlessly (or so it seems) and others pop out fully formed and ready to be something.

I guess it just reminds me of that saying where you write what you are ready to write. Sometimes we have ideas we aren’t ready to tackle at the moment. Other times we tackle them and falter, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep revisiting the idea until it gels.

There might be more to this Rescuers story later. I can’t say whether or not the characters will try to push their other adventures into my head or if I randomly run across something I know has to fit into their world. For now, I’m extremely excited to be slated for the upcoming anthology and waiting to see what else is in store from Sleeping Cat Books.