One day last week, I got a massive headache and
decided to go to bed early. But, before I went, I thought it would be a good
idea to check an email account that I don’t look at every day. You know what I
found in my inbox? Rejection letters. Lots of them.
I’ve been writing for years, and getting rejected
still hurts. I’ve sent enough
rejection letters to know that the rejection is just one editor’s subjective
opinion, but that doesn’t change how rejection feels. It feels like someone is confirming that I really do suck as
much as I believe I suck. It makes me feel like I’m wasting my life on
something futile. It shakes the microscopic amount of confidence that I have in
myself as a writer.
However, as I deleted my latest batch of rejection,
I realized that I wasn’t as devastated by these letters as I have been by past
rejections. When I got rejections as a teenager, I would get so angry at myself
that I wouldn’t write for weeks. I’ve matured a lot since then, but I think the
biggest difference is in the number of projects that I’m doing. I have a lot
going on, and I’m super excited about some of it. The rejections didn’t hurt as
much this time because I could easily shift my focus to the other projects. I
didn’t have time to dwell on the sucky-ness of rejection.
So, I think the moral of the story is to write more after rejections, not less. It’s
hard to be upset about one rejected project when you have a dozen other
projects going on.
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