Rebounding from Rejection: A How-To Guide To Survive the Emotional Turmoil That Is the Writing Business
Rebounding from Rejection: A How-To Guide To Survive the Emotional Turmoil That Is the Writing Business
By Jen Braaksma
Rejection sucks.
It’s a given in writing, of course. Everyone—even the most famous among us—has had their brilliant work rejected by agents and publishers. Stephen King’s Carrie was rejected more than 30 times. Agatha Christie couldn’t get her first manuscript published. Even beloved Dr. Seuss: 27 rejections.
Stories like these are meant to give us hope, right? “Aspiring” or “new” writers are meant to take heart that rejection happens to the best of us and therefore we need to stay strong and persevere. Your time will come.
But what if it never comes?
Still, you choke back your tears. Toughen up, you tell yourself.
You grasp the last glimmer of hope. You’ll write another novel. You’re now more experienced, more skilled after all.
This time, you think.
Only, there is no this time.
A hopeless, gnawing cold settles into the pit of your stomach.
You’re not good enough.
The dream you had for years, decades, fades into dark nightmares of despair.
The agents write, “it’s not personal”.
But it is. It is so, so, personal to us. We don’t write because we’ll make a quick buck. We write because it’s who we are. And when agent after agent, publisher after publisher tells us we’re not who we think we are, that cuts deep.
How do you come back from that hurt? How do you keep putting yourself out there again and again and again?
Consider these questions:
1. What experience, if any, do you have with rejection in the writing world? Write it down! Confront the darkness head on. Then feel it. We often want to run away from difficult emotions, but we also know that won’t help. We might as well use the tools we excel at. Journal your experiences, or write them into a story. Include your hurt, anger, guilt and shame—or your resiliency, positive thinking and can-do attitude.
2. What rejection are you anticipating—and fearing? Are you about ready to pitch a certain manuscript? Terrified to give your novel to your beta readers? Don’t want your friends or family to criticize it? Rejection in the writing world comes in all shapes and sizes. For me, I learned I was most sensitive to my husband’s comments. He’s not a writer, and he’s not my target YA audience, so he’s not my ideal reader, and still I wanted him to praise me to the heavens. When all he said was, “it’s great, Jen,” I pushed back. “What was great about it?” “Uh, I don’t know?” Then I’d get angry and he’d get exasperated and well, you know… So we discovered that it was best for our marriage if he didn’t critique my work. Now he reads it with this very practical stipulation: He can only say positive things about it. ☺ I get enough rejection and criticism from the outside world; I don’t need to misinterpret his support for me at home.
3. How personal is your writing? Do you consider it part of your identity? If so, remember that no one can take that from you, no matter how many rejections you get. Remind yourself why writing matters to you by writing down the reasons you write.
How open can you be with your family or friends about how writing rejection makes you (or may make you feel)? Not everyone in your life may understand—they may think that’s what you signed up for, so, no empathy from them. Consider seeking out other forms of support: online or in person community of writers, critique partners, book coaches, etc. We know what it’s like. We’ll cry in your coffee with you.
4. Do you have an idea for your next project? If so, write it down. Even if you’re not yet in the querying (and therefore rejection) trenches, and even if you’re still focused on your work-in-progress. It could be writing related, like another book or story idea, or it could be something entirely different that you’ve always wanted to do. Thinking about what comes next can help you look beyond the hurt to see what’s on the other side.
5. What other rejections have you survived before, and how did you cope? Relationships and employment are the most common forms of rejection we have to deal with, so think back on how you made it through the sting of those rejections. What lessons can you transfer to writing rejections?
6a). Let’s leave this on a lighter note: What is your funniest/most unusual/most interesting rejection story? Reminding ourselves how we can look back and laugh at what hurt us terribly at the time can help shore us up for the rejection we’re experiencing now. For me? It was my high school boyfriend. I was so excited to learn on the first day of Grade 11 that we’d be in the same English class. The next day he handed me a note. “God doesn’t want this relationship to work out,” he wrote. God? God?? How was I supposed to argue with that?? Turns out God was right. He and I weren’t meant to be—because it turns out my future husband and love of my life (the one who has to love my writing) was also in that very same English class. ☺
I can’t promise you’ll get your heart’s desire after suffering through all those rejections. You may never land that dream agent or get that perfect publishing deal. But if you put yourself out there, no matter how many rejections you collect, then, ultimately, you win.
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Jen Braaksma is a writer and book coach with a decade of experience as a journalist and nearly two as a high school English and writing teacher. Her first book, Evangeline’s Heaven, launched August 30, 2022 from SparkPress.
Evangeline’s Heaven
War is ravaging the Seven Heavens. Lucifer and his Commoner supporters, the lowest class of angels, are rebelling against God’s plan to exile them to the new Earth. When Lucifer departs on a desperate war mission, he leaves his daughter, Evangeline, to defend their home in First Heaven. Fiercely loyal and trained to fight, Evangeline stands ready to do her father’s bidding.
But things change when Evangeline overhears the archangel Gabriel forming a plan to destroy Lucifer—because, as he tells his son, Michael, he believes Lucifer’s plan is to find the Key to the Kingdom and claim the power of God to control all the Heavens for eternity. Refusing to believe her father capable of such treachery, Evangeline sets off to alert her father.
As she battles through the Heavens, however, Evangeline is shocked to discover that what she believed she knew about her father might not be true after all. For the first time in her life, she begins to question whether or not her father’s motives are pure. With the fate of the Heavens hanging in the balance, she must decide who she’s going to be: her father’s daughter, or her own person.
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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