Rejecting Rejection

After reading a snarky reply to a form rejection letter sent to an agent recently on Janet Reid’s Blog, it got me thinking about rejection. The person writes back to inform the agent that this rejection is one that she will regret. In this person’s attempt to reject rejection, he or she ended up sounding less confident. A snarky reply just isn’t warranted to a rejection of any kind especially when you are confident in your work.

In any life, but especially in the writing life, people face rejection. Rejection is just an ugly concept. Rejection is hard, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as I sometimes make it. Now it may seem as if a good way to ease the intial pain is to senda mean reply to see if you can hurt the agent or editior or ex-boyfriend in some way, but guess what? You probably can't. And even if you do manage to sting a few feelings, that pain is temporary for them and could still be long term for you because now YOU are the person who sent a mean email or letter or cow heart in a box!

I have decided to take a different approach to rejection. I am rejecting rejection by embracing it. I am accepting that all I have control over is my part, and the rest of it, I will just have to trust that my part will be enough. And if at the end of my life, my part has not been enough, then I will just have to trust that it may have been worth something or maybe it wasn’t, but at least I tried, I took the risk, and I faced the rejection.

Because the thing is, you do not have to write if you do not want to. And if you do have to write because you just have to get from all of that from the inside of you to outside of you, then you do not have to show it to anyone. But if you really want to show it to other people, you can, and then at that moment, it is out of your control.

Now your part has ended for the moment, and someone else’s part has begun. You now have to make a new decision. Will accept what is being offered back to you? Will you ignore it? Will your react to it with snarky comments and resentment? Will you embrace it for what it is? I have done all of these things and more, but remember you only have your part, the writing, the decision about feedback, and the cycle begins again.

I know that it is hard to try to only control your part because this part is so deep and intimate and so dearly held in your heart, and to have that part of you rejected hurts! It just does, but the choice to bury it and quit will hurt more, at least it did to me. So embrace the rejection as a valuable part of the writing life that is there to build you up and not to tear you down. That seems like a lie, but I don’t think it is.

Embrace your part—creating and accepting!