The Rejection Garden is less about rejection and more about creativity, persistence, and joy.
Over the next month, I am going to share one Tree or Manuscript with you, not in its entirety, instead,
I’ll post a synopsis, how many times it has been rejected, and then,
I’ll finish with my favorite line and include a picture of the tree and name tag.
"To ward off a feeling of failure, she joked that she could wallpaper her bathroom with rejections slips, which she chose not to see as messages to stop, but rather as tickets to the game."
- Anita Shreve
6 rejections, 6 submissions
Not surprisingly this one is all about failure, but the really really good kind. The kind of failure that brings you closer to like-minded or supportive people and progress. One cannot succeed without failure.
Pitch: Of course, she's a failure at creating a Failure Project. That's not a surprise, but ever determined and inspired by other "failures", Slinky, X-Ray, even Celcro, Dee knows she will succeed, eventually. And with this failure, she isn't alone, the whole town is along for the ride.
Favorite line: The first couple of lines. They set this story up so well and with great sarcasm, and acceptance, yet also hope...
"Dee was having one of her bad mornings. Strike that, a horrible week.
Actually, more like a lonely, atrocious year, full of mistakes."
Raising a kid who HATES making mistakes, like an emotional bomb going off in your face, twice, and with shrapnel, HATES is challenging. Set aside the autism, the early childhood trauma, and this feeling is pretty universal for kids, and adults. I wrote this story to celebrate this universal, putting a new spin of hope on it because no one likes making mistakes, they usually hurt in one way or another. But for Dee, a budding scientist, mistakes are a must, and coming to terms with that is monumental to success.
Yup, it's another Japanese Maple, but the fern behind it is really the star of the picture, a failure? Not really, just an exercise in patience.
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