Today I got my first rejection. Of course it was inevitable and I was extremely lucky to have had a story accepted at my first go around. Granted, I still have a submission “in progress” that I had sent in almost six months ago. This rejection had the quickest turnaround (7 days) that I’ve experienced or even heard of. It was soft rejection too (I think) since they encouraged me to still try to have it published. It wasn’t an outright No. So I’ll take that as consolation and see if the story can get accepted somewhere else. I’m toying with the idea of 3’s. After 3 rejections I’ll give the story a proper look to see what isn’t working. I did send it to a fairly well known journal so I can’t be too surprised they rejected it. I’m still new to the game. Of course it isn’t fun to get rejections, but they are necessary. Any journal that accepts anything and everything can’t really say they publish the best stories they find. I expect my incredible luck of having more acceptance notices than rejections was bound to give out quick, and I think the rejection slips will pill up much higher than the accepted. That’s life. Failures (if rejections are actually considered that) are just speed bumps on the road. Jarring, maybe. Slow you down a bit, maybe. Do you continue, absolutely. No one achieves their dreams by giving up. I’m just going to have to beat down that self-doubt that accompanies such letters. I’m just getting started.