Friendos, I was raised to be a cheerful kid certain of his importance in the world. My parents, bless ’em, ensured I had a pretty healthy self-image, and I managed to land on the Honor Roll more often than not at school, which pleased them, assuring me praise.
So rejection has always come as a sort of shock to me. Any negative sentiment directed towards me, in fact. My first reaction is always a variation on you can’t possibly mean me, sir, as I am beyond reproach. Which is usually followed by someone punching me in the nose, so you’d think I’d learn. But being a jackass is a genetic defect, and it takes a lifetime of work to overcome it.
This unfamiliarity with rejection is problematic for me due to my chosen profession: Few careers carry with them such a load of endless, bitter rejection. I’ve published nine novels, a book on writing, and dozens of short stories and I make my living writing things on the Internets, and still I enjoy a steady stream of rejection. Short stories get rejected politely, novels don’t sell, editors turn down pitches — rejection is constant. In fact, I wrote a series of blog posts about rejection letters a few years ago.
It’s a fact of life for writers, at least in my experience. Maybe there are uber-successful writers for whom rejection is a distant memory, maybe there are uber-talented prodigies who sold their first novel and have never seen a rejection email. All I know is, that’s never been me.
(Stares into the void and contemplates whether he’s a talentless hack and everyone knows it and everyone has been whispering behind his back all these years)
Rejection is on my mind these days because I just sold a story — after nearly nine years and 18 prior submissions.
No Trunk
The story in question was written in May, 2013, and I submitted it for the first time in August, 2013, and it sold on my 19th try. This isn’t all that unusual for me; I’ve got plenty of stories that took a long time to sell, and I submitted a novel to my agent in 2004 and she sold it in 2013, god bless her, and I pretty much never give up on a story no matter how many rejections it gets. And I have other stories that have been in my submission cycle for a lot longer than 18 attempts.
I pretty much reject the idea that (see what I did there) that there’s any sort of expiration date on a story. I can understand the argument that if 1,000 professional editors turn you down it might be because the story itself isn’t very good, but I also believe sometimes all a story needs is the right person to read it at the right time. So I keep submitting stories as long as *I* think they’re good. As long as I have faith in the story, I try to publish it someplace that will pay me in more than best wishes and kind regards.
Bottom line: If you’re a writer, get used to rejection in various forms. And move past it. Learning to let rejection notes roll off your back is one of the most important skills a writer can cultivate. That and the ability to sneak alcohol into places where alcohol is traditionally frowned upon, like libraries and public transit.