Persistence is the key. I know, how trite; but it's true.

Being an amateur writer, I spend a lot of time talking to other amateur writers who, like me, long to see their work in print, to see their byline staring up at them from glossy, professionally bound paper, or to see their name in large print across a book cover. So, also like me, they take something they've written, or they write something new, spruce it up, put it in it's best Sunday clothes, and pack it off to a publisher, and hope for the best. A few weeks later, when they're met by a rejection letter (about rejection letters: hand-written ones are nice. They make it easier to believe the editor's sincerity when he or she tells you that you're talented, that they liked your story, but it just doesn't fit their needs at this time. The worst ones are the form letters, the ones that begin "We regret that we cannot accept your story at this time because (check one):" followed by a series of common reasons for rejection, each bulleted by a little check box. I hate those.), they take the rejection to heart. It's not just a rejection of one story, it's a commentary on all of the author's perceived talent (or lack thereof). Read between the lines. "This story does not fit our needs at this time" really means, "You suck. Give it up, you no-talent, wannabe hack. Find yourself a nice day job and quit bothering us publishers with this drivel, we have better things to do. We hope you had a fallback career in mind, because face it, you will never sustain a living as a writer, unless you take a job at a newspaper somewhere writing crossword puzzles, because that's about all that your writing skills are good for. Have a nice day."

No, it doesn't, but that doesn't keep a lot of aspiring writers from gleaning that message from a rejection letter, anyway. This is usually met with one of two responses (or sometimes both, the second most often following the first, after wallowing in self-pity for a while becomes tedious): One is to decide that you do, in fact, suck, and to give up, deciding never to submit anything again. The other is to say to yourself "okay, well, they didn't think my story was good enough, but that's just one person. I'll keep trying;" and then either re-submit the story, as is, to a new publisher, try to figure out why the first one had a problem with the story and make some revisions to improve it and then send it to a new publisher, or decide it really is no good, or you can do better, and toss it out and start from scratch on a new story to submit.

Too many authors go with the first option, and never advance to the second. I've been tempted to do so myself all too often, even though I can count the pieces I've submitted on one hand. I've no business giving up so easily, I haven't even paid my dues yet.

So many would-be pro writers not only crave, but actually expect King-sized success (Steven King, that is ... and I'm not talking about his current success. I'm talking about how his very first novel, Carrie, was not only published, but became an immediate best-seller, and was turned into a hit movie, ensuring that he would never again have to live in a trailer and make ends meet by forraging for loose change at the local laundromat, all at the tender age of 23), with no understanding of how extremely rare that kind of success actually is; and when they don't get it on their first try, they consider themselves failures, and give up -- not necessarily on writing, for a true writer will keep writing no matter what, but on trying to get published.

They don't realize that it is much, MUCH more common for best-selling authors to have been at it for years, sometimes even decades, and that they got so much rejection on their paths to greatness that they could wallpaper their entire houses with the letters. Nor do they realize that for every mediocre author that has a book published because they were persistent, there are probably a dozen really good writers who aren't published because they give up too easily.

So don't give up. Keep at it. Keep trying. If at first you don't succeed ...

And keep this in mind: every time you write something, you're practicing your skill, sharpening your technique, refining your style and voice, and ensuring that the next thing you write will be better. With that logic, if you have as much talent as you think you have, if you have even half as much talent as your high school English teacher told you you have, if you just keep writing, and keep trying, eventually your writing will be good enough, and you will sell your stories, and you will be a professional.

And if not, there's always iUniverse.

This is, of course, as much a pep talk to myself as to any other writers out there who dream of going pro.