Why birth stories don’t sell?

January 4, 2008 

A very small publication catering to the residents of the this small town in Southern U.S. announced the theme for its January issue as “Birth” and invited stories for its feature section. This is one area I could just go on and on  until someone said, “Enough.” But, no one said then while I spent a night to submit the story within deadline.

A week later, the editor politely replied that as much as she enjoyed the story, she thought it wouldn’t be an ideal piece to be published. I took it in my stride - my first rejection. Moreover, it was written in haste and was high on emotion.

I was working on my assignment for the writing course and had to submit 3 pieces. I thought this rejection was an ideal candidate for the assignment to hear from my tutor who is forthright in telling stuff as it is, and I love him for that.  I sent in my assignment on 30th and his comments arrived yesterday. The rejection didn’t hit me as much as his comments on the piece. He wrote, ” Please don’t take this personally. But every woman goes through this and has a similar story to tell. You need to look a t a different angle and there’s a beautiful idea sitting right there on your article. Why don’t you instead work on that?”

He hit the nail on the head. I mean the world is inhabited by close to 7 billion people. And, we all just didn’t pop out. Every mother’s tale is important and interesting only to her. so, it’s best kept to myself. Lesson learned.

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Comments

4 Responses to “Why birth stories don’t sell?”

  1. Dip on January 8th, 2008 6:34 pm

    I read your postings regularly and the only one I didn’t like was your detailed description. I did exactly think “Please don’t take this personally. But every woman goes through this and has a similar story to tell.”

    Regards,

  2. Pravin on January 14th, 2008 3:44 am

    Havent i been telling you for almost a year that what you write is common and not some thing different!!

  3. Dip on February 13th, 2008 9:02 pm

    No posts for long time. Hope things are fine with you.

  4. lakshminl on February 22nd, 2008 5:20 pm

    Dip,

    True. I’m sure a good percentage of women from the 6+ billion people would have a similar story but that doesn’t make it less special. Anyways, it was just a log to keep my memory fresh :)… and the story was not the one posted here..it was different take that I don’t intend to publish here.

    Yes, everything is fine. Thanks for asking. Been on a vacation and just got back.

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