Last week a publisher informed me that a story I had submitted for their next anthology is not good enough to be included.
Oh, they were much more tactful, but the bottom line is just that – the story is not good enough.

And re-reading it, I must agree.
I could make a lot of excuses – I rushed the job because of the deadline, it was my first English-language story in almost a decade, the word-limit was very tight, I had no time for availing me of my indispensible proof-reader and sounding board, or call on beta-readers.
But that would just be making excuses.

I’m much more interested, at the moment, in revising and rewriting the story as much as possible, without time or word constraints, and then try my luck again.
What’s more, I like the two main characters, and I’d love to do at least two more stories featuring them.
And anyway, submitting that story, for all its weaknesses, was absolutely indispensible – it was necessary to overcome the stagefright one feels facing a new market, a new public, a new world.

Which leads me to the interesting part – the fact that my first English submission bounced back caused some parties to get into told-you-so mode.

After all, my bounce-back ratio was pretty low, when I wrote in my native language.
And my decision to stop writing fiction in Italian did cause some bad feedback when I published about it on my Italian language blog.

Now last week’s rejection slip caused a friend to observe that the English-language market is too competitive and too much devoted to “absolute professionalism” to accomodate a hack like myself.

There go your hopes of making money writing.

And yet, it’s exactly because of the competition and the professional attitude that I decided to stop publishing in Italian.
And I’m not the only one looking at the harsher but fairer big ocean out there, and feeling the small lake of Italian publishing increasingly like an oxigen-starved swamp (filled with psychotic crocodiles).
Some small publishers are spearheading the great escape, offering English translations of their authors.
Many more are just self-published writers, willing to try their luck with a wider potential readership.
Even bloggers are experimenting with second languages, feeling the Italian blogsphere closing in on them and limiting their power of expression.

Who cares if our work will be judged much more thoroughly and strictly, who cares if the competition is harsh, when we’ll be granted respect and consideration?
Why should we not welcome the opportunity of being put to the test by a fair environment?

Something is happening, and looks like I’m part of it.
And get-rich-quick dreams have nothing to do with it.