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Coping with Rejection
By Moira Allen
Rejection
slips. Is there anything worse than those humbling, preprinted
letters, too light to trick you into thinking your SASE might
contain an acceptance, too impersonal to tell you why? Rejection
slips are the writer's gremlin, the nagging suggestion that we
don't measure up. What can we do about them? How can we live with
them? How do we make them stop?
Unfortunately,
rejection is part of being a writer. Not just a beginning writer,
either; experienced writers get them as well. (Admittedly, Stephen
King's editor probably adds a nice note... Well, admittedly, I'm
not sure Stephen King ever gets rejected these days, but on the
other hand, where do you suppose he got the inspiration for all
that horror?)
One of the most
important steps you can take as a writer is to learn how to cope
with rejection, how to understand what it means to your career,
and how to move on.
Building
Boundaries
Writers are sensitive
souls. If we weren't, we'd find something else to do. Unfortunately,
that sensitivity also makes us more vulnerable to rejection.
The first step
in handling rejection, therefore, is learning how to distinguish
yourself from your work. You may pour your heart and soul into
your writing, but, in order to survive as a writer, you must also
be able to establish "boundaries" between yourself and
your creation. Your writing may be like a child to you, but like
any child, it must go out into the world to succeed or fail on
its own merits. If you can't develop that sense of boundary, you'll
go nuts -- and quite simply stop. Success will become impossible
if you cannot bear the pain of failure.
But
WHY?
You've probably
heard that editors who reject your work aren't rejecting you --
and that's true. However, they may not be rejecting your work
either. Lack of quality is only one reason for rejection. There
are many others. While the standard "Does not meet our editorial
needs at this time" doesn't tell you why a piece was refused,
it could have been for any of the following reasons:
A similar piece
is already on file. "Similar" can mean simply relating
to the same topic -- for example, if
you submit the perfect article on Antigua to a travel magazine,
and they have another article on Antigua
on hand (even though vastly different from yours), they won't
be able to accept another.
A similar piece
has been assigned. Great minds do think alike -- and you'd be
amazed how often two or more writers will query on a similar topic.
A similar piece
(or a piece on the same topic) was published within the last two
or three years. (Many publications won't repeat a topic for that
long.)
It's also possible
to write an excellent article that still doesn't quite mesh with
an editor's tastes in terms of style, tone, approach, angle, viewpoint,
or even length. (I once had a piece rejected for being "too
short" -- when I added 300 words, it was accepted.) Again,
this doesn't mean that your article was poor; it means that it
came close but not quite close enough.
That brings me
to the final reason for rejection: Sheer volume. If an editor
can accept five articles per month out of a pile of 500, it isn't
only the "bad" articles that are going to be rejected.
Perfectly good articles will also be rejected, simply because
the editor can't buy all of them. Your article may be perfect
in every way, yet be sent back just because it was #6 in the stack
of "maybes."
"Good" Rejection Slips
Is there such
a thing as a "good" rejection slip? Absolutely. Any rejection slip that offers actual information
is "good" -- because it helps you understand the reason
for the rejection. Some magazines offer a "checklist"
letter, listing many of the potential reasons for rejection and
"checking" the one that applies to you. Finding out
that someone else had already been assigned to the topic is a
lot more comforting than being left to assume that the editor
thought your article stank.
Even better than
checklists, however, are rejections that include a personal note
of any kind. Even the barest scribble
shows that the editor thought enough of your piece to respond
personally, rather than scrawling "No" on the outside
of the envelope and passing it off to an assistant. Treasure those
scribbles; they mean that you are making a positive impression.
Still higher
on the list of "positive" rejections is the "please
try again" note. When an editor asks you to come back with
another submission, believe it: No editor will ever say this unless
s/he means it. This is often the result of a submission that "just
misses" acceptance for one of the reasons listed above. Quite
often, the editor truly wishes s/he could purchase your piece,
but can't -- and doesn't want to lose the opportunity to grab
you as a contributor. Whenever you're asked to try again, try
again!
Self-Honesty
While there may
be dozens of reasons why an editor rejected your piece that have
nothing to do with quality, a writer must also be willing to ask
honestly whether, in fact, quality was the issue. When we write,
we often become so involved in a piece -- so close to what we
have written -- that an accurate assessment of quality becomes
difficult. Often, our work isn't as good as we thought it was
-- or wasn't what our target market required.
When I teach
writing, I'm amazed by how many students expect to sell their
first piece of writing to Cosmopolitan or Woman's Day. There's
nothing wrong with dreaming "big." There's also nothing
wrong with having to work up to those dreams. Failure isn't a
matter of aiming at Cosmopolitan and missing. Failure is a matter
of failing to take the steps necessary to hit your target -- maybe
not today, maybe not this year, maybe not even next year, but
eventually.
Good writing
evolves over time. For most of us, it is a skill, not a gift --
and skills are refined over time. Sure, there are occasional "prodigies"
who craft the perfect bestseller the first time they pick up a
pen -- just as there are "prodigy" musicians who play
perfectly the first time they pick up the violin. For the rest
of us, perfection is achieved by plodding -- and by endless practice
that may, for a time, make everyone around us cover their ears
and wince.
The reality of
writing is that when you start, you think you're pretty good.
After a year, if you've been writing steadily, you're likely to
look back on those first efforts and wonder what on earth you
saw in them. After you've been writing for five years, you may
look at those first-year masterpieces and wonder why you didn't
burn them on the spot. (This process never ends: As you continue
to improve, you'll feel this way 20 years from now, about the
stuff you write 19 years from now.) To some writers, this scenario
sounds depressing -- but what would be even more depressing is
the idea that you can't get better!
Writing is a
somewhat schizophrenic process. We must be able to look at each
piece we produce and say, honestly, "This is the best I can
do." At the same time, we must also be able to say -- equally
honestly -- "I can do better." Both statements are true.
What you write today is the best you can do -- today. Tomorrow,
quite probably, you'll do better. But only if you don't stop writing today.
It
Sank. Get Over It.
Someone developed
a t-shirt with a picture of the Titanic on the front and, on the
back, the words: "It sank. Get over it." The same can
be said of rejection.
It came back.
Get over it. Or more to the point,
get used to it -- because if you practice your craft, you're going
to get a lot of rejections over time.
"Getting
used to" rejection doesn't mean that rejection ever loses
its sting. It doesn't. Nor is that a bad thing: I suspect that
the day rejection ceases to hurt is the day one has lost one's
passion for writing. Pain isn't a bad thing. Pain simply means
we care.
At the same time,
there are things you can do to ease the sting. The next time your
material comes back with one of those awful slips, try one of
these:
Have a rejection
party. "Celebrate" your rejection with a pizza, a dish
of ice cream, a trip to the movies. You have a right to celebrate:
You have to be a writer to be rejected. (It never happens to dreamers.)
Start a rejection
slip file. Besides being useful for taxes (it proves to the IRS
that you are attempting to conduct a business), it can come in
handy down the line, when you're famous. Then you'll be able to
say, with a smug flourish, "Well, I was rejected 48 times
before my story/novel/article was accepted by Megabucks Publishing..."
Send
your material on to the next publisher on your list.
Write something
else. Better yet, start writing something else the minute your
last piece is finished and out the door. Rejection stings less
when your mind is occupied with a newer, and therefore more interesting,
project.
At the beginning
of this article, I asked whether anything was worse than a rejection
slip. The answer is "yes." Far worse than a rejection slip is never having written anything
that could have been rejected in the first place.
This Article was found at: http://www.articleblast.com/
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