Inviting Rejection

I'm sitting on the sofa in my living room right now, trying not to hyperventilate.  This is because I just pushed a button on a webpage marked 'Submit'.

I've sent a story out into the wild.  Not just to cosy, friendly beta-readers, or into the rarely-visited walled-garden that is this blog, but actually into the wider world.  I've submitted it for consideration to an actual publishing-type place.  Despite having been writing for years, I've never actually done that before.

There's a very simple reason for this: nothing I've written has ever been good enough, in my head at least.  Everything always needs more work, further polishing, just one last tweak before it can be sent out.  Except the more I tweak things the less I tend to like them, as a rule.

There are two reasons why this story is different.  One is that Friendy Beta-Reader the First told me this story really deserved better than to just be posted on the blog, despite originating in another silly writing prompt like 'Lavendar and the Random Acolyte'.  The other is that Friendly Beta-Reader the Second, despite only really taking up writing for NaNoWriMo last November, is already submitting things out there.  Good things.  And if he gets something published before I've even worked up the courage to submit then I will be, as the cool kids say, 'well jell'.

It may be petty, it may be foolish, but at least it's stirred me to action.  I have a story out there, hoping to make its fortune in the wider world.  And when the inevitable rejection letter comes, I shall bear it proudly and call myself a real writer at last.