How to murder rejection

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Image: Pixabay

Here’s a riddle for you.

What is made from paper, but these days most often from pixels on a screen?

What, despite its ephemeral nature can cut like a wound, its sting successfully piercing the heart of any creative soul?

What wounds like a well aimed blade? Like being dumped for the first time? Like being a huge Star Wars fan watching the The Phantom Menace for the first time? 

What can leave you feeling low, worthless, convinced that you’ve pointlessly wasted years of your life when you could have been pointlessly wasting it in some other way?

Answer?

It’s our old friend REJECTION, of course.

Now, those of you who have read this blog before know that rejection is something of an obssession of mine – perhaps because I’ve been laid low by it’s poison on many occasions.

But, there is heartening news, my dear, beautiful bundles, because here is a gorgeous fact to ponder.

REJECTION IS MERELY A STEPPING STONE TO ACCEPTANCE.

You can have that nugget of wisdom for free. If you want to type it up, add a picture of a kitten and hang it in your study, you do that.

For guidance on how to cope with this thorniest of writing issues – and for a nice list of famous authors who’ve been rejected more times than you have – why not pop over to the Mslexia blog, where my latest post is up and waiting for your perusal.

Be lucky.

 

24 thoughts on “How to murder rejection”

  1. Excellent advice Lynn. The trick is to keep on going.
    As the great man himself said… “By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.” – Stephen King

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    1. I love that Stephen King quote – and (if true) that he was that self confident by the age of fourteen! But yes, perseverance is key – really, what else can you do but grow a hide like a rhino and keep plugging away?

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  3. Pingback: Travelling Hopefully ~ The Writer’s Way | Tish Farrell

  4. No publisher has ever rejected MY work – I’m so scared of rejection I have never submitted anything ( apart from a letter to a health magazine, which was printed as the letter of the week, and I was promised £100 of cosmetics which I didn’t receive.)

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    1. What a swizz! Your prize letter and no prize. You should write a letter 🙂 Being rejected isn’t very nice, but I think I have enough confidence in my abilities now to take the rejections, fall apart slightly for a few days, then rebuild myself, knowing that my writing has something going for it, even if it’s not publishable just yet. Mind you, I haven’t had my novel rejected yet – let’s see if I’m as resilient after that gets turned away a few times.

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      1. I’m so relieved to learn that the novel is still sitting in the in tray – I thought it may have been turned down, and you didn’t want to talk about it.
        And if it gets turned down, just keep thinking J.K.Rowling, J.K. Rowling…

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Ah, thank you. Yes, it’s through to ‘second reads’, whittled down fron 1,445 manuscriots to the last 600 – still and awfully long way to go and could be rejected any moment. It’s also been submitted to another publisher’s open submission window and they’re already sending out rejections, so I could hear very soon if it’s a ‘no’ from them.
        As you say – J.K, J.K, J.K …
        I’ve already drafted a post assuming I get a rejection! 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

      3. YOU’VE WHAT? Ok, fair enough. i’m not sure that I approve, but it’s probably easy to do before the dreaded event. I hope your words are wasted, and it never sees the light of day.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. Haha! Yes, I saw it as a form of preparation – a therapy to help myself adjust to the most likely outcome. Of course, I wrote it last Autumn and am still waiting to hear back, so I was a little over optimistic on the timescale!

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      7. Great idea! Put your writing carrer into the hands of someone who hasn’t even got the courage to approach an agent or publisher with her own work – who sometimes is unable to even leave the house for fear she may be seen.
        You can pay me in advance 😀

        Liked by 1 person

      11. But I was just about to cook dinner…
        It occurred to me that all us struggling writers should swap manuscripts and try to sell each other’s -we’s probably come up with better pitches! 😀

        Liked by 1 person

      12. That’s actually a really good idea – we might be better at selling other people because we all get hung up on pushing ourselves forward and saying how great we are. It’s be less cringe worthy if you were saying how great someone else was!

        Liked by 1 person

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