Rejection - part of the process

Last Saturday I spent the day in Brighton, on the south coast of England.  I was attending a Publishing Industry Day run by an organisation called New Writing South.  Paradoxically, one of the highlights of the day was a session on coping with rejection.

It was led by author Beth Miller, who'd had eleven agent rejections and eight publisher rejections herself. The way she treated rejections was inspirational.  "Rejection is just part of the process of getting published," she told us. Something about that matter-of-fact statement got through to me.  It was delivered in a 'no big deal' tone.  So you've been rejected?  Get over it, and move on. Everybody else has been rejected too.

Listening to her talk, something shifted I my mind.  When I first started to receive rejections they pitched me back into being a little girl, getting school reports (always mediocre, always 'could do better').  I felt shame about being rejected.  I was being scolded and told off.  And to make matters worse, writers at the writers' circle I attended were selling stories, stories I hated and didn't rate.  So what was wrong with me?   

Now I've moved beyond that.  When I was at Eastercon a few weeks ago I talked to a writer who'd had a rejection from a magazine within one hour of submitting the story.  Mine at least took half a day to arrive, so I'm not worse than anyone else.

It's this talking openly with other writers about rejection that's new to me.  And doing so I find they aren't gnashing their teeth about rejections.  They're annoyed for a day, then they pick themselves up and submit again.  And finally I've got to that place too.  Salesmen know they'll get dozens of 'nos' for each 'yes'.  I have to adopt that mindset with submissions.  So today I made a list of my saleable stories that I haven't sent out, and then I submitted them.

That's part of the process too. Picking myself up and dusting myself off after each 'no'.  Then quietly getting back to work writing more stories - and submitting them.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more of www.wendymetcalfe.com