If you've tried to submit your writing to a literary magazine, you likely know how good it feels to be rejected. Constantly. Over and over.
At first, you were submitting to publications with clout - you're a budding Hemingway after all. But once you've tasted those first 20 rejections, you begin sending your stories to cut-rate bullshit rags who publish only those works not worth reading beyond, "The night was dark and moody..."
They reject you, too.
So you say fuck it, and you keep writing, and you get some business cards, and you put up a website, and you buy an expensive laser color printer with cartridges that cost more than your mortgage, and you bankroll a pipe-dream-project of self-publishing, and you set up a special email address, and...
...you get a rejection email. To your new address. The one you set up so that you could self-publish everything on your new Gutenberg under a phony name. How did they even get that email?
But it's like getting your nipple bitten during sex; at first it seems painful, but the more it happens, the more you like it. You start asking everyone to do it. You go out of your way to be rejected. There isn't a magazine or ePublication low enough on the totem pole. By god, you want to tell all your friends that you might just be stupid enough to get rejected by your own goddamn publication.
Take it from me, dear reader, all is not lost. Once you've run out of literary publications to whet your whistle, there are thousands of publishers and agencies out there just waiting to send you a form letter that begins, "Thank you for the opportunity to consider your work. However..."
Folks, this is what paradise is like. One rejection after another. Strap on your rubber undies and tighten the belt around your neck, because rejection feels so good...