Victoria Strauss over at Beware Writer Blogs makes a very good point: while the odds can be stacked against you sometimes when it comes to getting published (it's hard to make it through the slushpile, your original idea may have been pitched by 20 other people already), it's not a random crapshoot. "Aspiring writers are lonely outsiders banging on the doors of an exclusive club that doesn't want to let them in. But every published writer was once unpublished. If the industry doesn't want new writers, how could they ever have sold their first novels?" Nobody wants to tell an artist that despite their best intentions, hard work and dreams, there is a potential that their work just doesn't cut it. "If you've written a marketable book, if you do your research, if you're smart and persistent, you have a good chance of finding publication. If not...you don't." You know the saying, "Don't hate the playa, hate the game?" Just make sure that the playa plays a good game while he's at it.