So a while back, I had a post up with some good news in it, and then took it down because I heard from someone at the good news-giving organization that it was under wraps for a while longer. Uh-oh. I have since heard that the news is OK to share. So, hi. I am preparing for this. Because I got one of these.

More good news for Lori. I’m hoping that you guys aren’t sick of this sort of posting. But you know, it’s not magic or who-you-know when it comes to this kind of news. It’s more simple than that. It’s that I try. Try, fail. Try, win.

I have been rejected within 24 hours from online magazines I don’t even like that much. And then I’ve also been in Good Housekeeping, chosen by Jodi Picoult (Jodi! I’m correcting all the bad pronunciations on your name! Call me!). Is there rhyme or reason to it? Yep. I submitted to both. I submitted stories I quite liked to both, and one made it to the top of the pile, and one tanked spectacularly.

After being on the top of the pile, the tanking can sting. What else is new? Rejection sucks. And I’d be willing to bet there’s hardly any level of success at which you can put rejection behind you. J.K. Rowling could probably publish anything she wrote, including her to-do list, but the rest of us will have to live with rejection just about forever.

But if you work on the writing, and send stuff out, and send it to places that publish stuff like yours, and send it out again the second one place says no, your chances are a lot better. Or at least a lot better than sitting around hoping your writing will mature on its own, never looking at a Poets & Writers, never licking a stamp. (Do stamps even come lickable anymore?)

This isn’t just a diatribe for other writers. This is a diatribe for myself. I have to find a way to keep the writing habit alive, even though I spend a good deal of my waking hours working a job these days.

I have to keep reminding myself, though, that if I keep taking steps (and I will never stop saying that one of the steps is to keep working on the writing itself), that if I keep trying, sometimes I will win. That seems like it might be true for a lot of things.