Dealing with rejection

Several weeks ago, I queried a handful of publications about covering a local event. One publication said they were interested, and while the pay wasn't high and I had to keep the word count down, I was more than thrilled.

I sent the article about a week ago. I didn't hear anything - not even a confirmation that they had received it - until today, when they told me it didn't fit the needs of the publication. The frustrating thing was, what "didn't fit" was not something about my writing, but something about the event itself - something they should have known about already from my query.

On the bright side, they did say the article was very well written. That at least made me feel good - that it wasn't something that I'd done wrong. I submitted the article to another interested party - one that doesn't pay, unfortunately, but I'd rather see the article in print without being paid for it than banishing it to the "Deleted Items" bin. (Well, that's speaking figuratively, as I wouldn't really throw it away - but if I don't submit it to this non-paying magazine, it'll just sit on my computer doing nothing, and I still won't get paid for it.)

Rejection is part of being a writer, I guess, but it's still quite frustrating sometimes. Thankfully, I am not as sensitive to criticism as I was in my teenage writing years; now I'm able to shrug off the rejections and simply look ahead to the next submission.