For a writer’s blog, there seems to have been precious little about writing here lately.  I have been writing, but for the past 4 weeks it’s all been job-related — not a great source of inspiration for fiction writers. Accreditation reports are like that.

Happily, I completed my work-related writing task ahead of deadline (whew!), and what do I find in my virtual mailbox? This:

Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, this time your manuscript was not right for [name deleted for obvious reasons]. As writers ourselves, we understand how disheartening rejections like these can be, but as we say on our website, please do not be discouraged by this letter. Ours is only one journal’s opinion. Keep reading, keep writing, and keep submitting!

A quick response to something I submitted in July. I should be grateful for small favors.

Ha!

And so I post this list, the Nine Stages of Grief After Receiving a Rejection Letter:

1. Chocolate: “I’ll have one of those, and one of those, and one of those ….”

2. Severing all social media ties with the rejector: “Unlike. Unfollow. Untag. Unpost. Unfavorite. Unretweet. Un-you-name-it.”

3. Doubts: “I need to rethink this ‘retire soon and start my next career’ thing.”

4. Binge solitaire: “Score = 8 wins against 207 losses. Deal again?”

5. Binge TV: “Episode 48 of 93 will start in five .. four .. three .. ”

6. Binge sleeping: “Mommy?” “Zzzzzzzzzz.”

7. More chocolate: “Do these come in larger bags?”

8. Writing group: “The bastards!” “They’re obviously blind!” “And stupid!” “So, where’s your next chapter?”

9. Writing: Tap tappety tappety tap. Ding! Tap tap tappety ….

I just hope I can get through the first 8 stages quickly. NaNoWriMo 2013 is looming in the distance and I need to start planning.