In Praise of Rejection Slips

Despite its being the new year, the year I vowed that Everything Is Going to Be Different This Time, I am back in my same old listless lethargy of limbo, waiting to hear the fate of certain writing projects, utterly paralyzed until I do.

Here’s the worst thing: I may NEVER hear.

Once upon a time, there was such a thing as the “rejection slip,” an actual letter you would receive in the actual U.S. Postal Service mail, rejecting your work. It was often a letter typed by an actual human being.

I was once one of those human beings. When I worked for Scholastic’s Four Winds press as an editorial secretary, some 40 years ago, it was part of my job to type those rejection letters. When I submitted one of my own manuscripts to Scholastic under a pseudonym (a story for another occasion!), I had the dubious honor of typing a rejection letter TO MYSELF.

It became a bragging point to amass rejection letters. People would say things like, “Every rejection letter is bringing you closer to that first acceptance!” Published authors doing school visits would bring their bulging folder of rejections to show the students. “These are all the rejections I received just on THIS BOOK!” The students would gasp obligingly. One writing teacher I knew would give a prize to the student who received the class’s first rejection.

 Ah, those were the days!

Nowadays, publishers don’t bother sending rejection letters. On their website they say something like, “If you don’t hear from us within six months, assume we aren’t interested.” But it sounds a lot like, “We already know we aren’t interested! We will never even take a glance at your work! But go ahead and send it anyway, ha, ha!”

 Of course, this is partly our fault. Back then, professional etiquette forbade “simultaneous submissions.” You were supposed to submit to one publisher at a time, wait for your rejection, and THEN submit to the next one. And you had to mail in your bulky manuscript with a SASE (Self Addressed Stamped Envelope) for its return. Nowadays, authors can – and do – submit all the livelong day, just clicking SEND over and over again. So editors are drowning under a flood of submissions.

 And we are suffocating in their silence.

 WAAHHH!!! Oh, for an old-fashioned rejection slip coming in the mail today!

 But maybe I’ll get an email today that someone DOES want one of my books? I will perk up instantly and lamentation will become celebration. 

Until then, limbo continues… and may continue for the rest of my days….

 

What Is the Difference Between "Contentment" and "Settling"?

Happy new year, everybody!

Poet Molly Fisk suggests that instead of making new year's resolutions, we choose a word to reflect on throughout the year - or rather, that we allow a word to choose us. I've been doing this for four years now. For 2023: "closure." For 2024: "trust." For 2025, "openness." And now for 2026 - ta-dah! - "contentment." As the poet she is, Molly urges us to research our word - its etymology, its allusions, its literary richness.

For "contentment," I have a problem. The noun "contentment" is defined as "peaceful satisfaction." But the verb "content" has less pleasing associations. As a transitive verb, "content" means, according to Merriam Webster, "to appease the desires of" and "to limit (oneself) in requirements, desires, or actions." That is to say, to content ourselves with less than we had hoped to get.

There is something undeniably SMALL about contentment. When we talk about contentment, we are not talking about how we feel after a successful ascent on Mount Everest or winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. We are talking about sitting by a fire cozily reading a good book. We are talking about looking at gently falling snow outside a cottage window. And this IS the kind of contentment I want for myself in the new year, contentment in life's little things. 

So my question for myself - and for anyone else who wants to ponder it - is: when is this kind of smallness TOO small? We don't want to be the fisherman's wife asking the wish-granting flounder for more, more, MORE. But we don't want to settle for second-best, either. I love these lines by Pulitzer-prize winning poet Kay Ryan:

However carved up/ or pared down we get/ we keep on making/ the best of it as though/ it doesn't matter that/ our acre's down to/ a square foot. As/ though our garden/ could be one bean/ and we'd rejoice if/ it flourishes, as/ though one bean/ could nourish us. 

So, again, when is less too little? When is small too shriveled and shrunken?

Maybe it has to do with how much we are truly contented - peacefully satisfied - with what we have, as opposed to forcing ourselves to put on a smiley face in response to undeniable disappointment. And maybe it has to do with the size of our expectations - reasonable or ridiculous?

I love my small, somewhat shabby rental cottage and wouldn't trade it for a palace. (Note: this is a real photo! Not photo-shopped! Not AI-generated!)

I love my small, definitely shabby 14-year-old Honda Fit that I bought used from Boulder CarShare and still has their logo visible through its cheery turquoise paint. I would drive the same car if I won the lottery tomorrow. 

It's in regard to my writing career that I'm struggling a bit. I wrote two books last year; I'm awaiting word from the publishing gods on the fate of both of them. Hopes are dimming for the first one; I should hear about the other one very soon, and I want good news about it VERY MUCH. But publishing is getting more and more competitive. There are more and more new writers out there writing wonderful books. It may be that the book I have coming out in March, Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom, will be my last published book.

It's already gotten some nice accolades: it's a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection and received a glowing, starred review from often-curmudgeonly Kirkus. But maybe that's all it's going to get. And I so want this book, which may be my last book, to be THE ONE the world fawns over, the one that will secure my place in the pantheon of children's literature creators, the one that will make me immortal. Is that too much to ask?

Well, of course it is! If I think it's not enough that I've had a wonderful 40-year-long career, with this my 64th published book, AND get to live in a cottage I love with a man I love, with quiet peaceful happiness just about every single day, then the greedy fisherman's wife has nothing on me! So, yes, I am vowing to center my life in the year 2026 on contentment. I don't have just one bean to nourish me. I have whole steaming tureens overflowing with beans! 

My goal for 2026 is to remember this with a heart full of gratitude. 

One of the Happiest Days of My Long and Happy Life

This post is going to be stuffed full of love and joy and bliss and gratitude as I come down to Earth after my younger son's wedding earlier this month. I was too overwhelmed from the experience even to write about it until now, which is saying a lot! 

When Gergory was in fifth grade at Mesa Elementary School, he was one of eight students selected to take part in the school's foreign exchange program. The country chosen for that year was Peru. Now two-plus decades later, he was marrying his long-time love, Natalie, who is Peruvian American. It all felt meant to be! 

Their wedding, both ceremony and reception, was held on the rooftop of a traditional Peruvian restaurant called Tanta in the River North district of Chicago. But first the photographer took a lot of pictures on a patio by the Chicago River with the city's storied skyscrapers as a backdrop. 

So here is our little family: me, my sweetheart David, my older son Christopher, groom Gregory, and bride (and beloved new daughter) Natalie.

I was the officiant at the ceremony, and a bit nervous about my role, but I did fine. My dress was shorter and more sparkly than I'm used to, but felt festive for the occasion.

The heart of the ceremony was their exchange of “vows,” which really weren’t “vows” per se, but outpourings of love from Gregory to Natalie and from Natalie to Gregory. They hadn’t shared these with each other ahead of time, or with me, and it was deeply moving to hear them spoken for the first time here. Gregory is SO quiet (thank goodness there was a microphone, as his voice is also SO soft), and SO private, and SO outwardly unemotional, that it was something I could never have imagined for him to speak such beautiful words of love aloud, and in public. (Both my sister and one of his close friends told me afterward they had never even heard him say that MANY words at one time!). Natalie had told me earlier that she had come up with a metaphor she was especially proud of, and it was easy to see which one it was. As he is a jazz saxophonist, it was, appropriately, a jazz metaphor. I don’t have the exact words but the basic idea was: she may sometimes play the wrong note, or sing offkey, but he improvises something beautiful out of everything. Christopher was enlisted to be the ring bearer, or at least the ring keeper, and offer them to Gregory and Natalie at the needed moment. Natalie’s mother gave a blessing at the end.

Jazz musician friends of Gregory’s played gathering music and Indigenous Peruvian dancers had been enlisted to dance for us. Natalie and her mother continued the opening dance when the costumed artists finished their first piece (mother and daughter are both accomplished dancers), and then Gregory was pulled in (Gregory, whom I have never ever seen dance, who hates to be conspicuous or look awkward), there he was, dancing with Natalie, unrehearsed, twirling a handkerchief in the air to follow her motions, beaming, gracefully rising to the occasion, showing how fully he has welcomed her Peruvian culture into his life, its music, its dances, and most of all, its openness to emotional expression. 

Later on, after people were seated at tables decorated with flowers arranged by Gregory and Natalie and helper friends the day before, and little stuffed llamas brought back with them from their recent trip to Peru, endless platters of scrumptious Peruvian food were produced. There was more dancing, and once again, Gregory and Natalie had a featured role (me still marveling at Gregory for doing this with such poise and good will!) and many others joined in, including David and me (who also never dance!). 

The vows and those two dances were the high point of the wedding, and the trip, and my life!!! I don’t think I’ve ever had a happier evening. I will remember it forever.

The Best Gift from the Muses: A New Book Idea

Some of my writer friends have zillions of ideas, more than they could write about in a lifetime. I heard a talk from one children's book author years ago, who said he wrote 200 picture books a year - and (of course) only succeeded in publishing three or four of them (itself a most impressive feat). But for him, ideas were everywhere, springing up from the soil, tumbling down from the sky, a Niagara of ideas cascading through his life every single day.

I am not like that. (Imagine photo of one tiny drop of water dripping from the world's slowest faucet.)

It takes a long time for me to get a book idea. I have NO extra book ideas lying around, languishing for want of my attention. For me, a book idea is a rare and wondrous thing.

But I got one last week. It just popped into my head during a brainstorming session with my sweetheart, and there it was, an actual, bona fide, EXCITING (at least to me) book idea.

No, I'm not going to share it here. It's too new, too fragile, to speak aloud at this embryonic stage. But I'm obsessed with it. I spend my hour-a-day of writing time covering pages with handwritten notes about it. I Google things that have to do with it on my phone. I sat in church last Sunday, and something in the sermon resonated with the idea, so I had to grab the church bulletin and write it down.

It feels so wonderful to have a new book idea!!

Still in writer's hell awaiting word on the book manuscript I finished two months ago, I was too paralyzed with mingled anticipation and dread even to try groping toward writing something new. Despite my cheerfully claiming in this blog space that I was doing that, I was just lying to myself, or, more kindly put, pretending to myself. I avoided my beloved writing nook, tucked under the eaves in our darling cottage, because I wasn't worthy of a writing nook if I wasn't actually writing. (Thing I saw on Facebook: "You don't have to write every day to be a writer. You just have to feel guilty every day that you aren't writing.") Instead of writing, I got up freakishly early as usual and did New York Times puzzles on my laptop in the dark. How pitiful!

But now, I am back in the nook, with the light on, scribbling, dreaming, drinking tea from my special writing teapot, burning my special Betsy-Tacy writing candles. 

Right this moment, I am NOT thinking about the last book and what its fate will be. I have a NEW IDEA! Hooray for a NEW IDEA! Writing gods, thank you! 

And please, writing gods, help me be worthy of it.

The Worst Part of Being a Writer: Waiting to Hear

My new book (working title: The Cottage on Fox Hollow Lane) was sent to my editor partway through April. At the start of May, my agent followed up with a gentle nudge, asking if they were interested in the book. Their reply had one extremely encouraging sentence followed by two extremely terrifying sentences:

"Yes, we are very interested. (ENCOURAGING SENTENCE!) However (EVEN THAT WORD IS TERRIFYING!), we are in a bit of a transition here. Our new publisher has been here a week and is adjusting our acquisitions (WHAT ARE THE ODDS THAT THIS ADJUSTMENT WILL WORK TO THE FAVOR OF MIDLIST AUTHORS LIKE ME?). If you could give us a bit longer, I would be grateful."

A "bit" longer will be four weeks tomorrow. 

I have been handling the delay in the worst possible way - NOT writing on the new project I thought I was so interested in, NOT reading from a delectable stack of library books, NOT doing anything but check my phone every few minutes in an agony of dread. (To be fair, we also had a delightful extended visit from David's niece, followed immediately by a week-long visit from two granddaughters, a welcome distraction from fretting).

I WANT THIS SO MUCH! As every author in the history of the world feels about the fate of their creations. But this time I want it not just for me, but for my cottage, my sweet cottage on my street filled with wonder and whimsy, which is really the main character in this middle-grade novel. I made use of so many features of my street, working them into the story with staggering cleverness: the purple house, the peace sign house, the mailbox that offers free seeds, the fairy garden, the tiny park at the end of a beckoning path. I love them so - they deserve literary immortality! 

For some reason, it's been helpful for me to remember that I didn't love the cottage at first. David and I decided to rent it after a hasty fifteen-minute tour, and once we signed the lease, I actually hated it on our second visit. In my journal I wrote:

 "Can I really be happy there? The house is some 100 years old... the built-in bureau in our bedroom has drawers that will tip out and crash to the floor if you open them too far. The upstairs nook that was supposed to be my writing refuge has sloping ceilings so low there is no room for bookcases, so it's really a strange and almost unusable space. Most of the windows look out on the neighbor's house two feet away or on a bare board fence. I can't even imagine being happy there with no beauty at all as a balm for my soul. I would be ashamed to have anyone visit. They'd feel so sorry for me! I feel so sorry for myself right now!"

THIS is what I once wrote about the cottage I now adore!!! The writing nook I once reviled is a paradise! 

I used to hate to entertain and now I seek out any opportunity to invite friends to share this enchanted space. One of my writing groups met here and even named themselves "The Cottage Coven" in its honor. 

I don't know why this thought is such a helpful one.... that I was initially so wrong about the cottage - that my emotions shifted from shame and despair to pride and joy... Maybe it's just knowing that things all the time can turn out differently from what you think they will and sometimes turn out (vastly!) better. Maybe it's a faith in the magic of the cottage, which changed my heart, translating into the sale of the book about it. (Magic, and the value of believing in magic, is the book's central theme.)

Whatever happens, whether my book will ever be published or not, I'm glad I wrote it. I'm glad I gave the cottage the honor of starring in a story about itself. I can't help believing that the world WILL want this book. Doesn't it HAVE to want this book?

Well, no, it doesn't. The world has been quite clear in the past about refusing to love what I insist that it should. But I love my cottage. My cottage BELONGS in a book. The cottage is IN a book right now, my as yet-unpublished book, every page of which was written in love. 

So there, world!

And maybe I'll get some news of its fate (oh, please let it be good news) tomorrow? 

The Month to REALLY Try Something New?

The book I've been writing for six months now, the one set in my sweet cottage on the street where I live, the street filled with wonder and whimsy, is now DONE. Currently titled The Cottage on Fox Hollow Lane, it has been revised after extensive comments from my writing group and sent off to my agent, who emailed me the next day with this lovely response: "It's wonderful! You created something truly magical. It might be your best book." 

Now, I do have to say that he is generally an extremely encouraging person. He even created a grant through the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) intended precisely to encourage people! I'm not joking! "Each year, the SCBWI Impact and Legacy Fund selects three wonderful children's book creators in need of encouragement and gives them each a $2,000 grant, no strings attached, supported by the incomparable and generous literary agent Stephen Fraser."

But still. His encouraging words were most pleasant to hear. 

So now the book is off to my editor, awaiting its fate. And now I am thinking about MY fate, my fate and future as an author. I pledged this year to try writing something NEW AND DIFFERENT. I promised myself this would be the year of joy and PLAY. But I have I actually tried something new? No, I have not, at least in any serious way.

But now, I think - I THINK - I am almost ready to do this. Current plan: literary short stories! For grownups!! Loosely based on my seven decades crammed full of material! Eagerly, I trotted down on foot to the wonderful indie Boulder Bookstore and came back with an appealing harvest of recent short story collections to read as "mentor texts" and for inspiration.

I unearthed the journal I kept on my honeymoon in the hill towns of Tuscany, which is very funny and scathing, from the first page written in the early morning on the flight to Rome: "Rich is mad at me because I let the flight attendant take my tray, on which he, unbeknownst to me, had laid the special foil-wrapped Earl Grey teabag that he was planning to reuse." Doesn't this already say an awful lot about this marriage and what it is going to be like? And what about the woman writing this? Doesn't she already seem to KNOW this? And yet is doing this ANYWAY? I'm already intrigued! Yes, I am!

So trying to make a short story out of this journal is my plan - hope? dream? - for May. We shall see!

When You Write DONE on the Last Page of the First Draft

Last month, I experienced the thrill of writing DONE in big letters after the last line of the last page of my 55,000-word work-in progress, a middle-grade novel set in a cottage, like my cottage, on a street filled with whimsy and wonder, like my street.

It turned out that my jubilation was a tiny bit premature, as there was still one very short scene (to be inserted a few pages earlier) that I had failed to write. But I speedily dashed that one off, and my book was indeed DONE! 

Well, at least for that one moment.

Next up would be sharing the manuscript with my writing group, the Writing Roosters, but I wanted to do what revision I could to have it ready for their review. Most of the changes I made had to do with consistency. I needed to make sure that the weeks of the story had seven days in them, not ten; that when I wrote "two weeks later," it really was two weeks later; that when I had my characters eating cherries from the neighborhood cherry tree, the cherries would indeed be ripe at that time of the summer in Colorado. A huge task! Extremely taxing for the brain! But I did it and also made myself a map of the order of the houses on the street, so that this, too, would remain consistent throughout the story.

Ta-dah!

But now I'm in the most excruciating time of a writer's life: WAITING. In particular, waiting to see what the world - in this case, my writing group - thinks about this book that has occupied me so intensely for the past half a year. There are so many things it is impossible to know until someone else reads it. 

The theme of the book has to do with magic. Is there such a thing as magic? And - the central question I'm exploring - might there be value in believing in magic, in believing in anything, actually, even if it turns out NOT to be true? I love this theme! My favorite philosophy essay ever is "The Will to Believe" by William James, asking this question about belief in God. I love movies that feature a conman coming to town and transforming it - and himself - for the better in the process, just from giving people something to believe in. Think The Music Man. 

I myself think the plot of my book poses this question in an ingeniously integrated way, where all the storylines offer some insightful revelation regarding it. I think I have produced something that itself feels magical in its construction - a thing of shimmering beauty!

But I can imagine all too well that readers who AREN'T me might think: "Oh, it feels so contrived! All the plot developments making the same stupid point over and over again! As if we didn't get it the first time! Talk about beating a dead horse to death!"

So: which is it? A thing of shimmering beauty or the flogged carcass of a dead horse?

I will know more when the Roosters meet on April 8. After having shared many a manuscript with them now, I'm pretty sure the answer will be something in between, something of the form, "We like a lot of things about this, but it needs more work."

That's okay. Revision is what writers do. That's why any DONE is always provisional. In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks reported that Marcel Proust "rewrote portions of 'Remembrance of Things Past' from his death bed." I hope I won't be doing that here! But for now, all I can do is wait. And wait. And then wait some more.