Rejecting Rejection – A Survival Guide

Being rejected isn't fun. Now, that sentence may seem like a great one for the “No Duh!” Files, but rejection is something that the vast majority of writers who try to get published deal with regularly.

We've heard the famous stories. Frank Herbert's novel Dune was rejected by twenty or more publishers before it was picked up by Chilton, a publisher that you may know best for their automotive repair books. Before The Firm and his other best-sellers, John Grisham saw his first novel (A Time to Kill) get turned down dozens of times. A Wrinkle in Time by Madaleine L'Engle is another classic which was rejected over twenty times before being published.  Still, knowing that well-known authors and their works faced repeated rejection doesn't remove the sting when it's our own work being turned down.



The disappointment can be exacerbated by the fact that many rejections come as form letters with no hint as to the reason(s) why the work was not accepted. The use of form rejection letters by publishers is understandable. Some publishers get hundreds or thousands of submissions per month and can only use a tiny fraction of them. Also, there are some writers out there who will be more than happy to argue any point brought up in a personalized rejection in an attempt to convince the publisher they were wrong to not accept the writer's work. The cost-benefit equation for most publishers doesn't justify the extra time and risk of conflict which personalized rejections incur.

So, as writers, we realize we're going to hear “No” lots of times and many of those times we won't really know why. What can we do to deal with these facts of (writing) life?

• Remember That It's Not Personal – It's not You, the person, that has been rejected. It's the words on the page (or screen). Admittedly, we get attached to our words, but it's important to keep this separation in mind. You can get 100 rejection letters this month; you're still the same person you were before those rejections.
• Use it As Fuel For Your Creative Fire – Take your frustration and channel it right back into your work, like a baseball player who's had an 0-for-4 night and takes extra batting practice after the game. Make yourself do that extra round of revisions on your new story that you thought maybe you could get by without. Find a local critiquing group and start meeting with them; you can learn a lot not just from what they say about your writing, but what you see in theirs. Do the research to find a new potential publisher for your work – that next market might just be The One for you!
• Don't. Give. Up. – You've told yourself “It's not personal” so many times that you feel it's become your mantra. Your creative fire feels completely burned out. Fine. But don't give up! Find a way to keep your writing dreams and goals alive while adjusting your focus. Maybe you're an aspiring novelist. Take a break and try your hand at some poetry. You write gritty noir stories? Trying your hand at another genre could give you a boost. This sort of thing can be a great way to take your mind off your frustrations at your primary writing pursuit. And, if it doesn't turn out well, you can chalk it up to having reached outside your comfort zone temporarily.

Finally, keep this in mind. When you get a rejection letter it means that – in one way – you've succeeded. You had an idea. You started the process of getting your idea into written words. You finished your story or poem or novel. You researched possible publishers. You read the publisher's submission guidelines and prepared your work for submission. You submitted it.

Each one of those things that you did is something that you succeeded at doing. Each one of those was a stumbling block for thousands of other would-be writers who balked at submitting their work, or made a half-hearted stab at writing but never finished what they started, or even had ideas but never actually did the writing. Yes, your work may have been rejected today, but that rejection is a symbol of many successes that came before it. Take those successes, set aside the rejection, and write on!