Rejection. The bane of our profession. Those slips of paper which discourage writers, make them question why they bother, and may even cause them to abandon their dreams. Some don’t even get this far. Sometimes people are so reluctant to risk rejection that they don’t send their stories out, or even allow another person to read them. When I’m interested in something, it very often turns into an obsession. Also, I tend to dwell on the facts, the actual statistics.