Rejection hurts. It might become familiar, wheedling its way into your life so that it becomes routine, yet every time a story comes back with that familiar and generic note, "We're sorry but this isn't right for us. Good luck," it feels like another tiny piece of your heart is being ripped out.

Sometimes it hurts more than others. I was fortunate enough to get an entry into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) contest during their submission process in November. Because I have the fortune (or misfortune) of being one of those writers who hides behind her writing and tends to start a new novel or story instead of actually continually pursuing an agent or publisher, I had several manuscripts that I could have entered in the contest. I selected the one that I thought was the most advanced, that represented my writing and storytelling efforts to the best of my ability. Once I had registered, I had a week to submit my final manuscript.

I sweated over the clean-up of that manuscript, editing it furiously and loving every minute of having a deadline that made me feel like a real writer. I know, I'm a real writer because I do, in fact, write, but there's something about writing for a purpose, having a deadline that makes it that much more real. I pulled close to an all-nighter the night before it was due. I was stiff, achy, and feeling wonderful. When I finally uploaded my materials, I felt amazing. I had devoted hours to my passion in life and I hadn't noticed the hours flood by.

After that, it was a matter of waiting. The official notification date for acceptances was November 15th. All day, I waited. I wasn't the only one. The contest site had a forum in which hopefuls could post, chat and stress together. The day of the 15th, the boards were furiously buzzing; everyone checked constantly to see if anything had changed.

I got my confirmation email at 4:58 p.m., two minutes before I was supposed to leave my office for the day. I had made it into the contest! Amazon accepted only 5,000 and was strict in their guidelines, rejecting some hopefuls because they had formatted their manuscript slightly incorrectly or misread the word count that was allowed. Because I had been officially accepted as an entrant, like the other 4,999 people on November 16th, I confess that I fell prey to the "nah-nah, you should've read the rules" logic that uncontrollably seems to hit when you succeed and others don't. It's easy to do that when you're on the side of the line that did things right.

For the next two months, little happened. I became addicted to the forums on the site, lurking in the shadows and reading posts to see whether there was any news. I had a love/hate relationship with these forums. At first, I enjoyed reading comments about writing from my peers. The entrants were excited, exchanging first paragraphs, character bios, secrets of their writing processes, tricks for writers block. I've never been good at playing well with other writers; I've had too many bad experiences to completely trust them. I have this horrible tendency to read between the lines of gushing feedback because I've been burned a few times. Yet here, the writers seemed genuinely excited to talk to each other.

Then, once the excitement of "making it in" dwindled, so did the level of interest in writing. I still read the boards regularly but I noticed that there were really only about 20 consistent posters. I stopped reading around the time that the "regulars," the posters that had somehow formed an e-clique, began voting for each other in a high-school yearbook fashion: who was the wittiest, most sarcastic, kindest, etc. I was officially irritated. Why were these people posting on the forums instead of doing something like, I don't know, writing?

I stepped away for a while. It wasn't hard. It was the holiday season and the roasting turkeys, frantic shopping trips, and alcohol-seeped festivities provided an easy diversion. Then the holidays hit in full-swing and I was blissfully distracted. I celebrated Christmas and New Year's and tried to dive into my novel again. The ABNA semi-final notification date of January 15th was looming. By this time, I'd convinced myself I didn't care about the result. It was just a silly contest. My novel was being read by one Amazon Top Customer Reviewer, that was it. This reviewer could be anyone. They may not like my novel but it wouldn't matter because I knew it was good.

Then January 14th rolled around and I realized that, obviously, I'd been lying to myself. I cared. I cared more about this contest than most of my other submissions in the past because I had entered a work of fiction that I truly believed in, it was a good novel and I realized I wanted to be recognized for that.

I was back on the message boards and this time, it was different. I began to realize that the e-clique with whom I had been irritated before were truly a nice group of people. I wanted to hate them for that because they'd proved me wrong and I hate being proved wrong. They were funny. They were all in the same boat as me and because they'd bonded together, they were there for each other. While some of their postings bordered on sickly-sweet affirmations, many postings that made me laugh aloud. Even though they had no clue I was there, lurking in the shadows of their forum topics, I felt as though I were part of them. I started to feel affectionate towards these anonymous writers who, despite their affinity for spending their creative juices on an online message board, were still writers. These people were me, in their joking and stressing about what would happen on the 15th. I've always felt so alone before, writing in my little corner of the world, but for once, I didn't feel that way.

On the day of January 15th, I was useless. I tried to get my work done and pretend to my boss at work that I was diligently plodding away on my current project. Secretly, though, I was on Amazon.com's ABNA message boards at least once every ten minutes. Yes, I realize this is pathetic but when you give me full, untracked access to the Internet all day, what do you think I'm going to do? I'm an obsessive creature at heart, a quality which I think makes me a good writer. I checked in with my secret message board buddies and was so relieved that everyone else was as tense and curious as me that I rewarded myself by going shopping at lunch and buying myself a "reward" at the bookstore for whatever happened.

By 4:55 p.m., I was a wreck. I'd heard nothing yet. The notifications were imminent. Nothing was happening. And then…

…Someone posted. They had got in! They had their confirmation email! Heart in my throat, I refreshed my email box constantly, a ridiculous amount of times. I won't tell you how many. Just know… it was pathetic. Nothing.

By the time I left work, I knew I hadn't made it. I wanted to believe my email was late but I knew in my heart what it meant. I had been rejected.

I wasn't the only one. When the dust settled, it turned out that Amazon apparently hadn't been able to find the 1,000 semi-finalists they'd seemed confident would be there. In the end, only 865 entrants made it. Many of us were left reeling. I got my official rejection notice the next day and it left me disappointed and wondering if I'd made the right decision in trying to make a go of writing. When I was writing, I was happy, fulfilled, and elated. Yet the pain of rejection somehow had the power to make me forget all of that for a time. I began to doubt. I wasn't exactly a newbie, entering my first novel. I'd selected a carefully written and executed story that I knew would keep readers interested. But somehow I'd still failed.

It was only thanks to the people in my life who love me that I began to see sense. Perhaps my novel wasn't right for this "American Idol" of writing contests. Perhaps I did get a judge that didn't get the irony of my novel that I'd based on both the Old Testament and Green Day's "American Idiot" album. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn't the way I was going to break through.

It took a couple of days and yet another kind and personal rejection from a magazine for me to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again. ABNA may have been a pure roller coaster of a ride, an enlightening look into a new idea and a chance that would have been good and didn't work out but it was still just another rejection. It just felt more personal because I'd read the words of my peers in the contest and felt as though I'd known the people against whom I might be competing. Almost every writer who makes it can probably recall the days that they doubted they would. I hope that's what ABNA is for me and for all the other writers who tried, believed and were then rejected.

Since I was rejected, I've abandoned the ABNA forums. The semi-finalists have taken over with that "nah-nah" attitude that I'd naively had earlier in the process. I posted a question following my ousting from the running that earlier would have been answered with kindness and intelligence but was, this time, unfortunately, run off because "it didn't belong here." A week before, it would have belonged. I am no longer one of the elite. Many of the regular forum posters who seemed to seek nothing but community and conversation have vanished. I've read that there's a board out there for the "rejects" of the ABNA wars but, for me, my part in the contest is done. I have no doubt that the winner will be a top-notch writer, that his/her novel will be fine and brilliant. Yet it might take me a while to bring myself to find out. I'm allowed that.

There will always be that part of me that can't quite console myself with the fact that I wrote a good novel and just a simple validation of breaking that top 1,000 would have helped my fragile ego. I wanted to be recognized, to have been selected as one of the best but it wasn't to be. What I do know is that not only do I have a fantastic support group around me but that out there, somewhere, in the vast world of the Internet, there's a group of writers who seem to care as much about encouragement about success. And while they may not know me, I appreciate them and what they've shown me.

When it comes down to the bottom line, it was just another rejection. With rejection comes hope, at least that's what I keep telling myself. As long as the hope remains, I will keep writing. And as long as I keep writing, I'm alive. I have a mound of rejection slips and thus, a mound of hope. At this stage, it's all I can ask.

Samantha Clements loves to write and does so avidly. She's also the founder and editor of the fledgling website www.frustratedwriters.net, a site intended to help all those writers who are also in the process of publishing their work or thinking about doing so. Her articles have previously appeared on absolutewrite.com as well as other regional newspapers and journals.

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