2021. A new year, and a new round in the rejection game. You ask how the game works? It’s easy. The goal is to collect as many rejections as possible. So you apply for master classes and writing programs and grants and awards and residencies. You submit your work to agents and editors and publishers. You open yourself up to judgement. It’s never comfortable, but it’s the nature of competition. It’s how the game works.
It always unfolds the same way. First, you agonize over whether you should apply at all. Is this class really worth it? Is this magazine really the right market for my short story? Will this agent be the one who gets me a book contract? Or, my personal favorite, am I spoiling my chances with my dream agent if I submit now? News flash (and note to self): If you never submit, there’s an exactly zero per cent chance to land your dream agent. All right. You’ve rebutted all of your rationalizations.
Enter the next rule of the game: For each elusive acceptance, there are many more rejections. The game continues with more agonizing: Why bother jumping through all the hoops, if applying or submitting is only going to end up in another rejection anyway? This is where the old lottery adage – you gotta be in it to win it – comes in.
Okay. Decision made. You start assembling all the materials you need. You compile yet another sample of your writing. You ask people for references. You answer all the questions on the application form. You’re truthful and humble and witty but not too self-deprecating. After all, you’re a professional. Or at least you play one in the game. Then you write a synopsis and a query and make damn sure that you fulfill all the stated requirements to the letter. You edit everything and proofread it to death. And then you collate it all into an email, hold your breath, and, with a prayer to whatever higher power you think will listen, you send it out. Game on.
And then you wait.
You seesaw between hope and fatalism. Between daydreams and nightmares.
You wait some more.
And then, at last, there’s an email in your inbox, with an innocuous subject line that doesn’t hint at whether the email holds a coveted acceptance or, rather more likely, another rejection. You hold your breath again. You open the e-mail.
Another rejection. A stab of disappointment. A stab of pain. And then you shrug and convince yourself that it wasn’t right for you anyway. That it wasn’t all that important. That at least you now have that synopsis written that otherwise you would’ve procrastinated on for another eternity. And then you take another look at the rejection letter.
As disappointing as such letters may be, they sometimes contain valuable feedback on your writing, but at the very least, they bring closure.
Much worse are the build-your-own-rejection kits. You know the ones. The ones where all you ever hear back is crickets. Of course we’re all so very busy these days, but come on, how hard can it be to use a text expander to dash off a form rejection? Sure, the thirty seconds it takes add up over hundreds of rejections, but aren’t the intangible benefits in terms of reputation and goodwill and integrity worth the extra inch? Well, in a buyer’s market things like common courtesy, a signaling that you value the other person’s time and effort, have become optional. A corner easily cut. Valuable time saved to instead post on Twitter. Communication’s so important, y’know?
It’s something we as writers have to deal with on a regular basis. It’s something we have no control over. The one thing, though, that lessens the sting is the fact that it’s not personal. It hardly ever is. It’s much more likely that our work has been rejected because it’s not up to snuff just yet, or it doesn’t fit with a particular agent’s or editor’s portfolio. Or it didn’t, for whatever reason, resonate with the person who read it, or it caught them just at the wrong moment. Who knows? We don’t, and there’s no way we’ll ever find out. So all we can do is speculate. Which is entirely futile and, in fact, counter-productive.
So the next time you get a rejection, give yourself an hour or a day. Curse up a blue streak. Cry, if you’re so inclined. Talk it over with a friend. Or take a piece of paper and write down what you think. What you really think. And then burn that piece of paper, and move on. Keep writing. Keep putting your work out there. Keep learning and keep improving. But whatever you do, don’t let other people’s opinion of your work influence how you think about yourself as a person.