by: Rebecca Brock
You know what word I’m talking about.
You’ve finished up your short story (or poem or manuscript) and you’re finally ready to send it out into the world. You’ve done your research and found a magazine or publisher that sounds perfect for you, you’ve written your cover letter, and you’re ready to send your baby out to strangers. It’s terrifying but exhilarating and you’re already daydreaming about what you’ll do to celebrate your publication.
So you send it out. And you wait. And you wait. And then you get the e-mail you’ve been waiting for.
“Thank you for submitting your work. Unfortunately…”
That’s pretty much all you need to read. Once you hit that word “unfortunately,” you know what’s coming next.
The big kiss off. The “thanks but no thanks.” You, my friend, have experienced the moment every writer dreads.
You have been…rejected.
No matter how long you’ve been a writer, it’s never easy to accept a rejection. Even though well-meaning friends and loved ones assure that it’s not personal, that they’re just rejecting the story and not you, that getting published all depends on timing, blah blah blah, it’s still hard not to feel as if you’ve done something wrong. Even if you’re your own biggest fan, rejection can throw quite the monkey wrench into the machinery of your self-confidence.
I received my very first rejection bitch-slap when I was 17 years old. I had written a horror novel and submitted it to my favorite publisher, Zebra. Those were the stone ages, when manuscripts had to be mailed—actually mailed—to publishers, and the wait time for an answer could be months and months (but only if you remembered to enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope). It was an agony of anticipation.
And then one day I finally received my answer. My SASE came back to me, battered and creased, but in one piece. And just as thick as the day I sent my first three chapters to them. My hands trembled as I opened the flap. My heart pounded as I tried to keep my hopes grounded, even though a tiny part of me dared to hope. I slid the letter out of the envelope…my eyes scanned the page…and there it was: “Thank you, but…”
For writers, that’s the equivalent of hearing, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” Or the ever popular, “I like you as a friend.”
Rejection sucks. There’s just no other way to say it. I plugged along for years after that first rejection, sending out queries, typing and retyping the first three chapters of my novels. Every time I would send one out with the quiet hope that maybe this one would hit. Maybe I’d find the right editor at the right time. Maybe somebody would actually like my writing. And writing was an expensive business back in the eighties. Each query would cost something like five bucks for the round trip, and for a college student, that was sometimes hard to come by.
The worst part was the absolute coldness of the rejection letters. Those terrible form letters all followed the same humorless template. There was no inkling that anyone actually read my submission; instead, I imagined it sat in a slush pile until the editor decided to clean his or her office. I read Writer’s Digest and The Writer religiously, and I took some solace in their blandly encouraging articles. The first promising sign, the articles said, was if an editor actually took the time to write a personal note on the rejection. It meant you were cracking the ceiling that keeps unknown writers from the lofty heights of “The Published Ones.”
I didn’t think that was true, until the day I received a note from Dave Silva, who was editing The Horror Show magazine at the time.
The story wasn’t quite right, but he thought I had a strong voice and encouraged me to submit the story to another magazine.
That was the kick in the butt that I needed. Somebody read my story! Somebody who wasn’t related to me by blood and therefore obliged to like my writing actually liked my writing! It was the best rejection letter I had ever received in my life. It gave my vague sense of hope that perhaps I would one day be published a sense of concrete reality. It could happen, if I worked for it. It really could.
And eventually, it did.
Nowadays, there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of outlets for writers to find publication. The Internet has made it so much easier to research guidelines and submit stories and communicate with editors. The world that had once seemed as distant as the moon to me is now as close as a mouse click.
And yet…rejection still lurks around every corner, waiting to knock the breath out of the most confident of writers. I still feel the cold hand of that bitch-slap every once in a while, and it ain’t fun. That never changes.
My parents were always supportive of my writing, and I’ll share one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever received from them with you guys. Always remember that your writing is not going to please everyone. There are going to be people who love your stuff. There will be people who merely like it, and there will be people who absolutely hate your writing. You can’t please everyone, so don’t kill yourself by trying. All you’re obligated to do is please yourself.
And you know all those horrible, self-doubting, unpleasant feelings you have when you get a rejection letter? Those are your dues, baby. If you can’t thicken your skin and be able to take rejection, then you may need to re-evaluate your ambitions. No one comes straight out of the gates with a best-seller. Writers who claim to have dashed off a manuscript and sold it to the first publisher they approached are either juiced into the publishing world or full of crap. Personally, I go with the crap option.
If you want to be a writer, you have to learn to accept the fact that you’re going to be rejected at one point or another. It’s not the end of the world. More advice from my parents: give yourself an hour to feel sorry for yourself, or feel pissed off, or feel depressed about your hopeless desire to be a published writer. Wallow in it. Cry and sob and rend your garments if that floats your boat. Be a tortured artist for sixty whole minutes and wail about how no one understands your genius.
Then get over it and go write something else.
You see…that’s the secret: always go write something else. You’re a writer, for God’s sake. So go write.
That’ll show those mean old editors.
Look for more from Rebecca in future issues. You can contact her at pbwriter_at_hotmail.com.
