How Should Writers Deal With Rejection? (AKA: Get off the bottle, quit shifting the blame, and get yourself back into the game!)

Rejection has gotten a bum rap!

I said before that I’m often asked how to write a query letter. Oddly, no one ever asks me, “How should writers deal with rejection?” No one is searching for the answer to this question. So I hesitate to even write about it. I mean . . . my job as a blogger is the same as your job as a novelist or nonfiction writer: we’re supposed to give readers what they want. Not what they need. What they want.

And yet, I do love to hear myself talk. So I’ve asked myself this great question.

How should writers deal with rejection?

This writing life! It’s full of disappointment: rejections, lost chances, loneliness, insecurity  . . .

Creative people feel more deeply than other folks, I think. Writing is about connecting with your audience, so writing requires empathy. We writers often reach into the depths of our own hearts and stir up the sorrows we find in those murky places because suffering is common to man, and it ties us to our readers.

Sometimes, we write about the joys of life. Sure. But those high places are usually reached after a long, hard trek. When we write about the unsurpassed view from the summit we’re really exalting in the fact that we managed to persevere and finally conquer the brutal mountain.

So we feel intensely. It’s how God made us. There’s just no way around that. And rejection often leaves a gaping wound.

Rejection causes all kinds of distress

I remember Steven Roxburgh once saying that writers are all insecure. He illustrated his point by telling a story from his early years as an editor. He told us about a famous author who had won a Nobel Prize who turned in a picture book one day and the very next day the man was on the phone asking, “Is it any good?” Roxburgh was surprised by this. Why would a man who had won a Nobel Prize be so insecure about a children’s book he’d written?

But he was. And many writers are. For many of us, rejections and criticisms are shouted and they echo long in our minds, while, awards and accolades are barely whispered and they’re quickly forgotten.

So how unfortunate for all you soulful people that there is so much rejection and disappointment in this business.

But there is. There is now, and there always will be. Whether you are waiting to break in or have already published plenty and gotten starred reviews and won awards and made a lot of money—there will still be disappointments.

Jane Yolen, at a conference several years back, told us how discouraging it was to still get rejections after publishing more than 300 books. She spoke of one book that had been out on submission for years.

“Too quiet,” the editors said.

This is Jane Yolen, I’m talking about! She still gets rejections!

If that’s the case, what hope is there for mere mortals?

Since it’s always with us, maybe we should learn to deal with it in a healthy manner

At a different conference, another well-known writer told about how she had received rejection after rejection in the early days. One morning she got a letter—another rejection—and she sat down on the floor of her entry hall and cried. Her three-year-old son came and patted her back and said something like, “They don’t know anything. Stupid sh**s.” I can’t remember the exact phrase that the child used, but it was obvious that this was the way the writer dealt with rejections: she called the agents and editors choice names.

Another writer talks about kicking cabinets.

I’ve heard others say they scream at the universe.

Still others cry to God, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Yes, we writers are sometimes a tad dramatic. This is news to you?)

Some writers let their pain and anguish bleed over onto people. They kick and curse at more than cabinets and computer screens. They make angry phone calls or shoot off flaming emails. Some take to Facebook to express their displeasure or to wallow around in depression. They say that no one likes them. Life is unfair. They are talentless hacks. And they are just going to quit writing. Some even go so far as to talk about quitting life altogether.

Maybe we need to change our focus

How many precious hours are lost to writers who are focusing on rejection? They see it as a disease that needs to be endured with gritted teeth, or, as an enemy that needs to be defeated. Many writers believe that rejection defines them as failures, and it can’t, therefore, be left to stand. The writer must quit writing or punch rejection in the face. Those seem to be the only two options.

Might I suggest a third option? Brush it off as if it were no more than a pesky fly.

In reality, rejection is a good thing. It makes us strong. It makes us perfect our walk. If a child never learned to walk in a way that was better than his first halting steps, we’d say he was disabled. We all hope that our children will not just walk, but run. But if a child were to succeed at walking with jerky steps and he never fell and never had to keep trying until he discovered that to keep his balance he needed to shift his weight from one foot to the other or bend his knees, then he’d be walking jerkily through life and he’d never be able to run bases or play tag.

At its very basic level, rejection is no more than falling down as you learn to walk. If you want to die after one rejection or five or fifty, I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you have gotten dumber with age. You were smarter as a one-year-old when you plopped down on your diapered bottom and then pushed yourself back up again and took a few more steps.

A toddler is not focused on falling. He is focused on walking. And almost all toddlers who are focused in this way do learn to walk, and then they go on to hop and skip and run besides.

   Disclaimer: I am not a psychiatrist, nor do I play one on TV. I am 
joking around a bit at the expense of those of us who have played the 
drama queen from time to time or have given ourselves to self-pity for 
no good reason. I'm not speaking to people who have medical conditions 
and any persons who are on medication should not take my words here as a 
suggestion to flush meds.

Related posts:

Writers Retreat Rejection Rejection ~ How to Reply New Query Deal