When the Big Blues hit

And I'm not talking about my big blue hunky men. 'Cause, well, if they hit, I'd just hold on for the ride. *interject lascivious grin*

No, I'm talking about the 'will the publishing world ever notice ME?' blues. They hit nice and squarely into my chest this morning when I opened up the letter from RWA with my contest scores awaiting me inside.

I had five scores: 9...8.5...6...5.9 and 5.1

Now, why couldn't the last three be of the mindset of the first two, I ask? I know it's a subjective contest, but man, oh man! To have two judges score me so close to a 10 and three others put me in the 50-60th percentile just confuses me. And yes. It gets my feathers all ruffled, too. How else does a writer react when their novel, their baby, their fear-happiness-tears-joy-sorrow-another macandcheesenight all rolled into one, gets rejected? When we get told by the mark of a pen that what we've poured our heart and souls into isn't good enough, how do we handle it? Me? I just sat for a minute and let the hurt have its way with me.

Then I shored up my confidence and moved on.

Is the sadness still there? Yes. Will I be rejected, turned down, and/or ignored again? Certainly. But I haven't given up the fight yet! Nor do I plan to any time soon.