They’ll keep you going when things are not so right.
When rejections keep hitting your mat
Receiving these things is an authorly fact
Of life - never let them be a blight.
The great thing is the little successes will hopefully mount up. In the meantime, you can put them on the writing CV. Also for all the hours where you seem to try and try and yet you feel you get nowhere, these small successes can boost your self esteem and help validate your writing. Every writer needs to feel that validation sometimes. Certainly it can help you feel like you are a proper writer. I know I need to have that confirmed sometimes.
The writing game is frustrating and long.
Everything you send out seems to be wrong.
Rejections - oh so many! And
Acceptances - oh so few! And
Keep your chin up, persistence pays, be strong.
Oh so true! And when successes come, such as being shortlisted, it will mean more. Writing is one of the few professions I can think of where failure is expected, where you can learn so much from it and then go on, hopefully, to get your work out there. After all surgeons aren’t “allowed” to fail. Vary your writing and experiment with what you want to do. I started off just writing novels but now love writing short stories and scripts too. It can be useful to have smaller pieces of work to send out whilst you’re working on a longer item - if these shorter pieces can get published and earn you something, then great and it’s something for the CV. If not, writing short story hones your other writing skills (writing to a deadline, sticking to a theme for themed competitions) and to a word count. Short stories are the best way I know of to “write tight”.