[Nerds_feather]

you're all speaking a lot of sense. if you can't handle rejection, the creative arts are not the place for you.

and the point i was trying to make above is that even a lot of actually good writing doesn't get accepted by specific magazines or book publishers, for all kinds of reasons. sometimes it's because they simply didn't have the time to look as closely at yours as they did to an already known quantity. sometimes it's because your story, while good, is too similar to something they published a month prior. sometimes it's because they just happened to get a lot of good stuff at the exact time you submitted your story, and yours just didn't work for them like someone else's. or like 1000 other reasons.

one thing i do is, every time i get a rejection, i start revising the story. i ALWAYS find something i don't like, but somehow missed before. this time--with a story that i'm convinced is good enough for someone--i'm sending it to another writer friend, whose taste i trust, to make critical remarks...because as several of you said, it pays to be as polished as possible.