I was greeted with four rejections this morning. Life’s way of making sure I don’t get too cocky and begin to think I’m always on-target. One was from a low-paying publication that I don’t even like, so that admittedly hurt a little bit. Okay, a lot.

I get rejected frequently, but I realized I don’t ever mention it on the blog. Not because I’m embarrassed by it or because it might seem like I don’t have it all together, but because it doesn’t bother me at all anymore. If I send out ten queries and get five acceptances, I’m usually just happy that I’ve got five new assignments to work on. These days, I tend to send batches of ideas anyway, so I might get a no on two and a yes on one (or the other way around) and I suppose that takes away the edge from the rejection as well.

There’s a story that I’m desperate to sell and start work on, but so far, my top two markets for it haven’t quite taken to it: I’ve already been rejected by one editor and the other is still pondering. Think it might have to get sent out again today. I’m currently struggling with the choice of sending it to a higher-prestige, higher-paying market and playing the waiting game or sending it out to a slightly lower-paying, slightly less prestigious market that will quell my impatience to work on it. What would you do?

In other news, my story Seeking a Groom With a Loo appears in the June issue of Elle magazine: “There’s a revolutionary idea spreading across small towns and villages in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, as more and more girls are refusing to marry men who have no toilets in their homes. We look at how women are talking about what was once a taboo subject – their right to basic sanitation.”

I’ve just renewed my contract with Elle for another year, so you can expect to see my byline pretty much in every issue in the coming months. And I’ve got some really interesting stories lined up, too, including another women-only series.