Non-Stop Reads: How to Avoid the Rejection Blues by London Casey

Sunday, September 15, 2013

How to Avoid the Rejection Blues by London Casey

Rejection sucks. It’s supposed to suck because it makes acceptance that much better. We all face rejection, but when writing, it’s hard. It’s hard to put so much into a story or a book and have someone not want it. Not like it. Take that a step more and look at book reviews. It’s a hard thing to swallow when someone publicly writes that your book was the worst book ever written.

But that’s part of life, right?

It’s easy to take rejection to heart and question yourself. The best way to get over the rejection blues is to look at the rejection and what it actually means. A few years back I had sent a lot of material out that got rejected. It hurt, again and again… but after talking to friends I realized something. We were in the middle of a dead economy. And finally someone wrote it to me. They clearly stated they loved my writing but couldn’t publish it because the economy had hurt them so much they were scaling back.

There’s always a reason for rejection.

If the rejection comes with a reason, run with it. Maybe it wasn’t the right genre. The right length. Maybe there were errors. Maybe it just wasn’t the right time. And that’s okay. We have to pick ourselves up and move forward. That’s all part of being a writer.

To try and make this a happy post… I look at this way:

If someone says ‘no’ that means they’re leaving room to say ‘yes’ to someone else, correct? Sure, that sucks to be you then. You’ve been rejected. BUT… there are so many rejections that happen on a daily basis, think of how many people were told ‘no’ … those all opportunities for you to get a ‘yes’ … right?

Bottom line is that we have to keep going. We have to write. Take that emotion and write something better. There are plenty of authors out there who were rejected and it made them mad so they went home and write the next greatest novel. And I can guarantee you that if you look up your favorite author you’ll read stories of how they were rejected time and time again. I mean, just think about all those editors and publishers who rejected something like Harry Potter… uh, whoops, right?

Keep writing, get better, get thicker skin.