Rough Week

Hopefully your week went better than mine. Broke my tooth last Friday and lived with the accompanying pain until Tuesday, when the dentist extracted the offending tooth. Of course, writing wasn't really an option, as pain is not a good conductor to imagination or romance.

On top of that, I received a rejection that same day from an editor I'd queried a couple of months ago. Writer's are such strange people ... I didn't read the email (even though it could have, right there on my phone) until I got home. In my flawed logic, as long as I didn't read the email, I wasn't rejected.

When I finally recovered from my Vicodin-induced haze, her polite rejection said, "I think you have a really intriguing premise, but it just didn’t quite resonate with me. This is only one editor’s subjective opinion, of course.

I wish you the best of luck with your manuscript."

What the h*$$ does that mean? I'd love to sit down with the editor to get the unvarnished truth of what she saw, or didn't see in my manuscript. Because something is missing, and I'm stumped as to what it could be. The problem is, editors are afraid to tell writers the truth, for fear of retribution or an angry reaction.

So, without a way to get an answer, the best thing I can do is go on. Back to writing at least an hour every day. Listen to workshop tapes and polish my craft.

My goal is to top 30K words on my manuscript. What's your goal this next week?