Another rejection... Kind of.

So this last month I've been flogging my entry in Mills and Boon's New Voices contest and sadly didn't make it to the final 10. First, thanks to Nikki Logan who helped me out with polishing my entry until it sparkled. I won a kind of mentorship type thing with her at the Romance Writer's of Australia conference in August (through the Ovarian Cancer charity fundraiser) and it was a pleasure to work with her.
Secondly, I want to thank all of my amazing friends and family who stopped by and left a comment and voted. It's really, really awesome to know how many people support me in my endeavor to be published.

Now, do I take this as a rejection? There were over 800 entries and some were really, really good. Only 10 were chosen to advance on to the next round and since I wasn't one of the 10, was I rejected? I'm not sure. I stopped to think about the thousands of submissions each line would receive every month and out of these, how many debut authors would be signed on and given a slot. Competing with how ever many authors they already have and are committed to publishing, the chances of being picked up through the contest were actually considerably higher than my slush pile chances. But I'm still not feeling rejected. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I can still submit my historical to New York, whether it's because I already have a partial on Sally Williamson's desk that I haven't heard back about yet or maybe it's that I want to write single title not necessarily category. I keep thinking that Harlequin would be a fantastic place to start out as an author and learn the craft and hone my abilities but is it what I really want?

I have no freakin' idea!

I'm far past the stage of subbing to anyone and everyone just to be published somewhere. I've got my three houses that I would climb over the bodies of my fallen fellow writer's to be published with and I won't stop until I achieve that goal but with the rising ebook trend and the emergence of Carina Press and other smalled publishers, am I aiming too high? Does wanting to be pubbed with Avon, Berkley or Harlequin seem like an unachievable goal? At the moment? Yes! I feel like I'm standing in Hawaii with my hands in the air waiting for it to snow. Is this how everyone feels? I reckon so! I've said it before to people who after a bad rejection or a bad result in a contest crack the shits, give up. Go home, tear up all your books, delete your files, throw out your dictionaries and never look back. Not me. Never.

Everyone in my family has something they're good at, artistically speaking, and I despaired of ever finding my thing. That thing that sets me apart as a person, as a contributing member of society and as a successful individual. For me, that thing is writing a cracking good yarn! I've been at this for about six years now but I stopped along the way to have two babies, move house, change jobs and study. I figure that still leaves me about four years to reach the contract stage since most published authors I speak to took about ten years. Four years? It's not long on the bigger time line of my life. I'll be thirty-two. I've got about four complete and an unknown number of started manuscripts under my belt and more ideas than I'll be able to write in my lifetime. Can I do it? Am I close? You betcha ass I am! =) Now I'm going to turn off the internet, close all my browsers except for a Word document and I'm going to write my little heart out because this is who I am.

I'm an Author!