You know that feeling when you’re scrolling through your social media feeds and you see all your pals talking about their new contracts? You pause and think, am I the only one who can’t land a contract? I know that feeling all too well.
It’s fun to rejoice with our writing friends when they’re celebrating their book contracts, but what we see on social media is not a balanced picture of what’s actually happening in the world of writers at large. Rarely does anyone post, “Hey, landed another rejection—woot!” At least I haven’t seen any!
But rejection is the norm—just ask anyone who’s been seriously writing for any length of time. Even though I recently signed a contract with Barbour Publishing, I was sucker punched by another rejection from a different house on a different project not long after that.
Rejection is still my norm.
The thing is, it still stings. I’ve talked about the logical side of handling rejection and ways to beat the rejection blues. Yet no matter how much practice I have dealing with rejection and no matter how many strategies I employ to deal with it, it still sucks.
If you’re a writer you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Rejection of a writing project is so deeply personal and it can be hard to separate the rejection of a specific writing project from a rejection of ourselves. Yet it really isn’t about us. It isn’t.
No really…it isn’t.
The good thing about rejection is that it shows we’re trying and we’re diligently getting our work out there. If you’ve submitted and been rejected, you’re already light years ahead of those who write but keep their manuscripts tucked safely inside their hard drives. Submitting is worthy of celebration!
Keep going. Keep trying. Keep writing.
Renew your connection to the vision you have for your life and writing. Celebrate the small victories along the way because you’re doing something you love!
So even if I’m not going to head over to my Facebook page and post about my rejections and brag about them on Twitter (I’ve actually had some doozies!) I do want to encourage you that we’re in this together. The vast majority of books written are never published.
Rejection is the norm.
And if we’re writers, that might very well be the only normal thing about us.
Thanks for writing this. So true.