I received an awesome personal rejection last night.  It would’ve been better if it had been an acceptance, of course.  (And a nice chunk of change, too.)  But.  If you’re going to get rejected, this is how you want it to go.

So, (at the risk of tooting my own horn), the rejection said that they liked the “clean prose and sharp, true voice” and then asked for more and complimented me on my “lovely style.”

Awesome, right?

But.

But.

What if this one story is a fluke?  What if I don’t have a lovely style and I just happen to have stumbled into it just this once?  What if the reason the voice was sharp and true was because it was that particular character who came through so powerfully for me, but none of my other characters do?

These are the things that keep a new writer up at night.  I love that I wrote a story that generated that kind of response.  (And I hope that it will soon find a home so I can link to it for all of you to read, because I really am proud of the story.)

But I worry that this story is an exception and not the rule when it comes to my writing.  This was a story that clicked when I wrote it.  I knew “it” was there, whatever it is.  But not all the stories I write have been like that.

Another that I thought also worked hasn’t received the same type of positive comments that this one has.  So…

I don’t know.  The only solution is to keep writing and see how I evolve.  I hope this story wasn’t a fluke.  I hope I do actually write all my stories cleanly and with a strong voice.  But I don’t know at this stage.

Only time will tell…fingers crossed it isn’t a fluke.

(And, no, the picture has nothing to do with the post, it just makes me happy to see it.)