You come home and you get that rejection letter for the hundredth time and it just makes your day. Yeah.
We’ve all been there. Over time you build a thick skin to it, because it’s basically like applying for a job in a field that has a glut of applicants. For my day job I work at a university and I once talked to someone in the hiring seat who told me that for any given job there could be from fifty to over a hundred applicants. How the heck do you stand out against that (somehow it is possible because I did it)?
The publishing game seems to be a whole lot worse. I don’t have the facts and figures to back it up, but I do have my stack of rejection slips to prove it’s not as simple as writing a novel. Seriously, I’ve read the blurbs in the agents’s section of Writer’s Market and Novel and Short Story Market books and there are plenty who say they receive “hundreds” of submissions in a month.
That’s a lot of competition. To me, it’s like standing in a book store and reading through the titles trying to find the one gem that’s really going to make you glad you shelled out your ten bucks for a really great novel. I’m guessing I’m not too far off the mark . . .
So, what do you do when you have a bad day which only gets even better when you get home and get a SASE in the mail or pop open your e-mail and get to read that gem of gems: “Unfortunately what you’ve written isn’t right for us . . .”
Like I said, I’ve gotten thick skin over the years, but they still punch me in the gut every now and then. It’s the ones that sounded like a great match for my stuff in the description of what the agent wants or when I’m sure I’ve got a really decent query letter and then I get the dreaded ‘thanks, but.’
Usually I take a few moments to get depressed or ticked, depending on the day. If I’m tired, I usually go for the former, adding a great big sigh and staring dejectedly at the world or placating myself with some escapism through video games, TV, snacks or some other methodical activity. If I’m ticked, I usually have a few choice words for the higher powers and toss in a metaphorical number one salute.
Then I move on with the rest of the day. The key, at least for me, is that you don’t let the rejection keep you down. It is part of the job in a way—it’s like your least favorite part of whatever day (or night) job you do do for money. You procrastinate it, shudder, roll your eyes and then you get it over with and move on.
Rejection’s real downside is almost never getting feedback so you can improve your game. It’s like throwing a ball at a target, blindfolded, and some hollow voice only tells you if you hit or missed your target without ever telling you how close you got or even what direction you threw it.
So what do you do? Well, I find my ways of coping. Nothing gets me feeling better (when I’m in a ticked off kind of mood) than plugging in one of my favorite video games and bringing on the slaughter—any first person shooter will do. If I’m worn out and looking for a more peaceful solution, then a little mindless television or even a walk will do.
Is it worth it, you ask? Worth what? Not being a writer?
I remember one time I got ticked at the entire business. I’d had enough of rejections (I think I got like three “gee thanks” letters in one week) and the entire publishing game, and decided I was done. I denounced writing, tossed all of my stuff in a drawer and quit.
It lasted about three weeks.
I didn’t miss it much the first two weeks. Then some story started nagging at me and another started in at my imagination. I took it as long as I could and pulled my story back out. That’s when I realized the truth of it all.
I don’t write just to be published. I write because the stories don’t leave me alone. They keep working at me and pestering me until I get them down on metaphorical paper (since I type on a keyboard). And I’m guessing you do exactly the same thing. We write because in a very real sense, we have to.
And it’s how you get through those days when you curse everything from your desire to write to the blankety-blank agents who pass you by. It’s the story which wins out, not whether you got your foot in the door that day. The stories get me out of bed in the morning and keep me up writing until eleven-thirty or midnight when I should have gone to bed.
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