Rejection. With trembling hands we open the email only to find the familiar words, “So sorry, but this isn’t for us.”
What do you do next?
When I began putting my words on paper, I was a young English student. I expected rejection and ridicule. I had no lofty belief that my English teacher would read what I wrote and rave at my brilliance. Instead, I expected (and rightly so) criticism. At that point in my life, I realized that writing is fraught with the prospect of rejection.
Never did I realize then what I know now–that rejection is a part of a writer’s life. Each time a perfectly crafted query goes unnoticed or worse still in the slush pile, I cringe and hide my head. More than once, I’ve given up on the project and allowed it to disappear among my long list of Documents, unread and forgotten.
Withstanding rejection is one of the hardest things any artist has to learn to do. Whether you’re a painter, artisan of jewelery, writer or performer, there are people out there who will not love your work. Those people tend to drive us nuts.
As a stand-up trainer I face audiences all the time and I’ve learned a thing or two about rejection.
1) For every person out there who frowns at you, there are fifteen who are smiling.
2) If we focus on the frowns, we will not only become paralyzed, but we will also fail those smiling faces.
3) Sometimes the frowns are misinterpreted. Sometimes even they are smiling underneath the frown.
4) Those who persist win.
I’m trying to adapt these insights to my writing endeavors. When someone rejects my work, I remind myself that agent or publisher or reader is not rejecting me. And, guess what, maybe my timing was wrong. Maybe it was a perfectly crafted query. If I persist, maybe someone will look up from the page and smile.
How do you handle rejection?
Leave a Reply