Recently I wrote an essay called “Setbacks in the Creative Life.” It was a reaction to a publisher deciding to cancel an upcoming anthology to which I’d sold a story. It focused on the necessity of putting aside the many disappointments common to writers and other creators and continuing to move forward with resolve, persistence, and courage. I think it only apt, then, to balance that tough-love essay with one that emphasizes the exhilaration of triumph rather than the disappointment of rejection.

I was living in Greece when after a hiatus of decades I began to write and send out stories to science fiction and fantasy markets. It was all done via paper mailings in those days, so every story had to be printed out and sealed in a manila envelope. Since I couldn’t get stamps to affix to the self-addressed return envelopes, I had to find and insert international reply coupons; not every post office had them, so I had to scour the city of Thessaloniki. Sometimes in the beginning I despaired of ever getting published as rejection slip after rejection slip poured in. This is where persistence helps. You’re starting from a position of being absolutely unknown, and you have to keep sending out stories until an editor takes the bait. During this period I longed for a sale – any sale – and finally it came.

My initial sales were to two Australian science fiction magazines. The first, “Clear Shining After Rain,” was to Altair, which paid well for the standards of the times; in fact, it qualified as a professional sale so that I was later able to use it as a credit to join Science Fiction Writers of America. What a thrill when I received that acceptance and check! I had five sons by then, and I celebrated by going out and buying an abundance of ice cream for everyone. My second sale was a fantasy called “War Horse” to Harbinger: Australian Magazine of Speculative Fiction. What made this sale especially thrilling is that the editor called out of the blue, from Australia to Greece, to let me know he was buying the story. It was also wonderful, of course, to receive my author’s copies of the magazines.

Other sales followed, along with many, many rejections. My advice is that you put the rejections out of your mind as quickly as possible; just accept them as part of the cost of doing business. Focus on the good stuff. It will come if you are patient and persistent. Trust me. And pay attention when editors write personal notes. Once, for instance, I sent out what I considered one of my best stories, “Dark Mirrors,” to an anthology called Warrior Wisewoman, which featured strong female protagonists. The editor liked the story but said she didn’t have room to include it, and she asked me to resubmit it during her next call for stories. I did, and she bought it, and it appeared in Warrior Wisewoman 3. After that, two other important hardcover anthologies picked it up as well.

Another amazing out-of-the-blue event occurred when I was still living in Greece. By this time I had begun self-publishing some of my books and stories. A filmmaker in Los Angeles emailed me and said he had really liked one of my stories and he was interested in making it into a short film. Various personal concerns caused him to delay the project, but about a decade or so later, after I had moved back to the States, he sent me a contract, purchased short film rights, and also optioned rights for feature length.

These are just a few of the success stories I could tell you to offset the setback stories in the previous essay. One thing I would like to emphasize is this: the only way you are going to sell your stories or novels or nonfiction pieces is to put them out there. Often it has happened that I struggled to sell the stories I had thought were my best, while some of the stories I weren’t so sure about sold faster. It doesn’t always come down to what stories you subjectively like, but rather which stories suit the editor’s needs or fit an anthology’s theme.

I still struggle to sell my stories, sure, as do most of you other writers out there. Expressing ourselves through the act of creation offers its own rewards, of course, but there’s nothing quite like that sweet thrill of triumph when you make a sale.