Tag: rejection
How To Deal With Non-Constructive Criticism
If you have been on the agent querying treadmill long enough to receive a request for a full manuscript, then you know the feeling: the simultaneous swell of pride and the utter fear of not measuring up. Your query letter worked, hooray! An actual expert from the publishing industry, with a slush pile as high […]
It’s Not Rejection; It’s Feedback.
I imagine the easygoing among us don’t remember their first time receiving constructive criticism; teflon, some people, or indifferent. Not me. In primary school the report card system was E for excellent, S for satisfactory, and U for unsatisfactory. I swam in a pool of excellence until the day I received an S in handwriting. By the […]
Write it Forward: Five Ways to Stay Positive
“Unfortunately, your project is not quite right for us.” This was perhaps my fiftieth rejection from an agent for my first novel, which remains unpublished. I keep my favorite rejection slips in a file folder to show aspiring writers when I give a workshop. We’ve all received rejections and bad reviews. There’s no way around […]
“It’s not you, it’s me” Navigating the Waters of Rejection
Soon, I will hit the “send” button on an essay. This is the twelfth submission of this piece. After eleven rejections, my finger hovers over the “send” button– cautious, conflicted. A flood of emotions rushes over me. I am drowning here. I have put this sucker out there so many times that I am beginning […]
How To Handle Rejection: Six Tips
The lives of creative people fascinate me. As far back as I can recall, I have devoured biographies and interviews with performing artists—singers, actors, dancers, even famous models. Often I read how some celebrated actress has faced repeated rejections, only to triumph finally with a huge hit—the breakthrough role that made her career. I learned […]
“This Is How It Goes.”
Allow me to set the scene – You recently completed writing the most difficult story of your career. You pulled it off! Your exhaustive research came through. The ending poured out of you like liquid diamonds. You redid the ending of your last novel a dozen times. This time, it felt like the story was […]
Celebrating Rejection Letters? Easy After Finding Felicity is Published
Rejection letters are beautiful things. I can say that now, feeling somewhat smug that my novel, the very novel for which I have said beautiful rejection letters, has found a home. That it took six years is a fact that I do my best to repress. They were six very very long years. Does it […]
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