Coping with Rejection

When I began attending my mentor’s workshop, one of my favourite writers there was a man called Roy. He earned his literature degree, then spent years writing a book of fiction. He threw himself into the writing scene and became one of the city’s most prominent mentors. We spent two years workshopping that book. Every Monday night for almost 700 days, we sat down to a new and brilliant instalment.

As he finished the book, he ran creativity workshops. He published poems. He made websites and dedicated his life to the literary endeavour.

He finally finished the book as I was making my way to a new city.

We never heard from him again.

He’d put his manuscript together and posted (yes, posted) it to all the top publishers in the country.

Nobody wanted it.

Not a single local publisher, so that was the end of Roy. He was so mortified by the rejection that he decided to stop writing. He still hasn’t rejoined the writing scene 25 years later.

I think if Roy had sent his book to others, it would have found a publisher, but he never gave it the opportunity. Rejection can be a motherfucker, especially when it entails a novel you’ve spent two years writing.

As a 21-year-old, I, too, struggled with rejection on a smaller scale. My poems were terrible, so they were frequently annihilated in that workshop while everyone else was singing Roy’s praise. I remember leaving in tears more times than I should have.

If you were a plumber who failed to clear a drain, you’d get new advice and try again.

If you were an electrician or an accountant, your failures would probably be equally cerebral. Writing isn’t like that. If you’re doing it right, you’re putting your very soul on the page, so when critics annihilate your work, sometimes it feels as though they’re annihilating you.

You have two options when that happens. You can quit and become a painter or you can suffer the blows and keep writing. If you choose the latter, all those painful obliterations will prepare you for editors who are far harsher than the sort of human you run into at a bookshop. If you receive a critique that hurts you, you have completed a lesson on how to work with a professional editor.

When you finally begin getting published, you will have an advantage over every other writer. You will have enough stoicism to efficiently repair your work with industry professionals. Roy would never have made it in the industry, not because he couldn’t write, but because he couldn’t take rejection.

Just because it hurts you, doesn’t mean it harms you. Sometimes it’s even beneficial.

Don’t be like Roy. If you get beaten down, get up again. If you do that enough times, I promise it will be worthwhile.