It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you make art of any kind and try to put it out to the world, you will face rejection. People will say No to your work in all kinds of different ways and you will have to learn how to cope with rejection.
Your stories will be rejected from magazines, agents and publishers. Your attempts at marketing your work might also be rebuffed. When you pitch a podcast to talk about your book, they might say no or totally ignore your request. An idea to cross-promote with another writer might be rejected or your Amazon or Facebook ads might not have the desired effect.
All of this is very grim and very hard to take especially for those of us with a sensitive, artistic disposition.
I remember five years ago when I first started writing on Medium. I had been trying to get my work published in a couple of big online publications on that platform. I spent time writing something that I thought would be perfect for one of them and I was very proud of the resulting piece.
I wanted the publication to recognise how ‘just right’ my piece was for them and accept it. Then my writing would benefit from their hundreds of thousands of subscribers and I would get lots of readership.
This was what I needed from the publication. All of this need was emotionally packaged into the act of clicking Send.
When they didn’t act on my need, (and when I nudged them on Twitter and sent them something else and they still ignored me), I got pissed off and dejected. I took it personally. In my emotional hurt it felt unfair. I spent days being miserable and feeling very low about my writing.
Sometimes it isn’t the rejection itself that is the painful thing but the unmet expectation. We want something so badly, we’ve invested a whole heap of time, energy and money into our work and we need it to pay us back.
Better to invest in what you can control
To suffer less from rejection, it is better to be more invested in what you can control and less attached to what is out of your control.
The only things you can control are the quantity and quality of your work. When it comes to marketing it is about the number of pitches that you send or the number of times that you share or draw attention to your work.
You have no control over how it is received so stop wasting your frazzled emotions on this.
Rejection isn’t personal
Most of the time, rejection isn’t personal. Your piece either wasn’t right for what they were looking for or there were so many submissions that you got lost in the crowd. They are not on a personal vendetta to make you feel like crap, however much it might sometimes feel like it.
Maybe your piece wasn’t good enough and that’s why it got rejected. The best remedy for this is to keep practising your craft so that you get better.
Rejection builds your resolve
There is a positive side to rejection – it builds your resolve. It is like the muse is testing you to see how much you really want something. Will you give up at the first hurdle, the first rejection, the first sign of pain? Or will you find your way through and keep creating? Will you keep doing this every time you get knocked back?
Each rejection is a step closer to your goal. Stephen King used to put his rejection letters onto a spike. The more rejections he got, the more he produced and the better he got at his work. Eventually people started to say Yes to him.
In her early days as a writer, Elizabeth Gilbert had a policy that if she received a rejection, she would send out another story that same day. She saw this as batting it back over the net. She had a long view; she wasn’t going anywhere and one day she would wear a publication down enough that they would say yes!
How to handle rejection
The pain of rejection can by huge and for some it stops them creating. They think that they are obviously not good enough so there is no point continuing.
Please don’t let rejection get the better of you. I want you to be true to your creative self and to keep working.
Be gentle with yourself. Congratulate yourself for the effort that you made and the courage that it took to make it.
You might need treats to soften the blow. This is where coffee and a chocolate brownie might come into their own! You could also let people close to you know that you are a bit fragile at the moment. They might think of fun ways to cheer you up.
Dealing with rejection gets easier the more you do it
Once you realise that a rejection isn’t personal, and that it is just one of the crap things about being a writer, it is easier to deal with.
When I launched my novel in 2020, I had a policy of pitching two podcasts a week in the hope of being interviewed about the book. Some said yes straight away, some said no straight away and some didn’t reply.
For the ones that didn’t reply, I followed up two weeks later which sometimes got a yes, sometimes got a no and sometimes continued to be ignored.
Whether they gave me a yes or a no, I asked if there were any other podcasts they thought I might be suitable for and this got me a lot of extra opportunities.
These days I don’t worry about getting rejected. The important thing is that I keep writing and keep making efforts to share my work.
A rejection means that you have achieved something, even if it didn’t have the desired result. You learnt how to do something, you put those skills into action and you had the courage to put your creation out into the world. This is an achievement. Don’t ever lose sight of that.
Don’t let the pain of rejection stop your flow of creation. Just batten down the hatches and gently, steadily keep working.
Plodding gently
Cali x
“A rejection means that you have achieved something.” What an excellent way to flip the negative headspace!
Something else helpful to remember: don’t give up on that piece just yet. I’ve had the same piece rejected by one publication and accepted by another.
This rings so true and I hear you Cali. Thank you.