A Pin Up for Rejection
It happened again. A criticism came my way on a new work in progress, jolting my confidence and making me wonder why I even bother to write. Then another comment came in on the same section that said, “Great writing!” It seems that like so many other areas of our lives, the judgment about the quality of our work will vary according to who is doing the evaluation.
We’ve all read the stories of famous writers whose initial outstanding works went through layers of rejections. Now any publishing house would offer these people millions of dollars regardless of the quality of work because of their recognizable name. It would seem then that the beauty of our writing is in the eye of the beholder. And in many instances that view is scarred by dollar signs. We know it. We understand how the industry works. But when our masterpiece is criticized or rejected, it still hurts.
We’ve done the best we could. We’ve honed our craft to the point our heads hurt. We’ve increased the pool of submissions, and we’ve put ourselves into debt for the rest of our lives to attend conferences and take writing courses. Yet, those rejections keep coming. And we wonder why do we bother? The frustration mounts and we stoop from the weight of discouragement. Shouldn’t we have developed a tough enough skin by now? Not necessarily. Unless we are made of stone, those rejections will continue to sting each and every time. We chastise ourselves, go to the mall, eat chocolate, or my favorite is to be defiant and resend it somewhere else. We wallpaper with our rejections slips or create a dart board. We collect them for the biggest, best, or funniest rejection stories like fishermen talk about the one that got away.
The why or manuscript got the heave-ho could be as variable as the weather or as simple as an editor’s indigestion on the day they opened our query. But the one reaction, we must not have is to quit. Then the enemy has won.
Here is my favorite verse to pin up when that self-addressed envelope lands in my mailbox or when that critique says, “Do you really want to be a writer?”
Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward (Hebrews 10:35 KJV).
We’ve all read the stories of famous writers whose initial outstanding works went through layers of rejections. Now any publishing house would offer these people millions of dollars regardless of the quality of work because of their recognizable name. It would seem then that the beauty of our writing is in the eye of the beholder. And in many instances that view is scarred by dollar signs. We know it. We understand how the industry works. But when our masterpiece is criticized or rejected, it still hurts.
We’ve done the best we could. We’ve honed our craft to the point our heads hurt. We’ve increased the pool of submissions, and we’ve put ourselves into debt for the rest of our lives to attend conferences and take writing courses. Yet, those rejections keep coming. And we wonder why do we bother? The frustration mounts and we stoop from the weight of discouragement. Shouldn’t we have developed a tough enough skin by now? Not necessarily. Unless we are made of stone, those rejections will continue to sting each and every time. We chastise ourselves, go to the mall, eat chocolate, or my favorite is to be defiant and resend it somewhere else. We wallpaper with our rejections slips or create a dart board. We collect them for the biggest, best, or funniest rejection stories like fishermen talk about the one that got away.
The why or manuscript got the heave-ho could be as variable as the weather or as simple as an editor’s indigestion on the day they opened our query. But the one reaction, we must not have is to quit. Then the enemy has won.
Here is my favorite verse to pin up when that self-addressed envelope lands in my mailbox or when that critique says, “Do you really want to be a writer?”
Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward (Hebrews 10:35 KJV).
posted by Linda Rondeau at 8:01 PM
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