YvonneParoDid you receive my query?  Did you receive the follow up message I sent you a week later?  If you have received either, please, please, just tell me that you have.  That’s all I need to know.  If you don’t have time to critique me, I don’t mind.  If you had no time to read it, send me a rejection note anyway; just a simple “thanks, but no thanks,” is all I ask.

A critique may bruise the ego slightly, but I come away from it having learned something.  A polite rejection note is slightly less enjoyable, but at least I know where I stand with the editor.  The type of rejection that burns me every time is the silent treatment.  Was it something I said? Is my idea so stale that it doesn’t deserve a response?  Or can I continue to tell myself that I’m a flawless writer; maybe some technical issue caused the silent person at the other end to never receive my work?

It feels like I’m screaming into a snowstorm in a remote location.  I’m completely blinded, except for a moment where the snow stops or a breeze pushes the snowflakes to reveal a faint promise of a solid object.  A few solid objects could help lead me through the storm, so I could actually get somewhere.  The snow blinds me again, and as I reach out, I find nothing.

The journey of getting my work published has just begun this year.  I’m pleased to say that I have had some success; I have been published a few times, so maybe I should not complain.  The rejection responses are something I was prepared for; the silent treatment, not so much.  I still continue to wander through the storm because I love what I do.  I just wish I could find more solid objects, find a path, or perhaps find some kindly person with an extra pair of ski goggles to lend me.

 

Yvone has come out of the closet as a writer.  She always puts a little extra care and love into herEnglish assignments, and has taken to writing lyrics very seriously, even though they would never be heard in the genre of music she used to sing.  It finally dawned on her in 2009 that writing is a passion; so here she am, tinkering away at the keyboard constantly, and loving it for everything that it is.

She has written news articles for her local sports paper.  Blogging is her new hobby.  Read her here.  She’s taking it slowly because she has also joined the ranks of motherhood – times two – in the last two years.