The exquisite beauty of rejections

I put a new page on my website in the goose girl section, recounting its reject history and including a few rejection letters. I'm so glad I saved all my rejection letters. Those of you who have come hear me speak may have seen my letters laminated into one long roll. It's satisfying now, battle scars, and collecting them felt like some kind of progress during those long, anxious years of submitting books and stories and receiving nothing but rejections in return. I really do believe that rejections are good. Rejectionsn of any kind hurt, but through them we are gently pushing into the path we should go, the place we should be. My life would be very different if The New Yorker had taken that story I sent them eleven years ago, or Realms of Fantasy. Through the discouragement, I found the kind of writing that I really had the most passion for and the best place for it. I love the children's book world so much.

I finally updated a few other pages of my site, including upping the number of children in my bio from 2 to 4. I can hardly believe that's true. I'm a mother of four. Good golly. Yesterday I took my babies to my parents' house, their first outing besides church in two months. They were like, "What is this strange place? We're very skeptical, mother. What was wrong with home? Why, there are entire days when we don't even enter every room of the house. It's a veritable world unto itself. Let's not be hasty with this manic globetrotting. Home, if you please."