Why an Onslaught of Rejection Will Turn You Into an Unstoppable Badass
Failure, where is thy sting?
Writers are mad, prickly creatures. We operate in solitude. We live inside our brains, often to the exclusion of all consensual reality. Things can get preeettty messy in there, especially when our demons get together for their daily seminar in our heads.
I was no different, once upon a time, which is not to say I’m above it all now and rejection can no longer touch me, just that I’ve suffered so much of it, the scorpion has lost a bit of its sting.
You’d think this would be aspirational, but it is, and it isn’t. It’s good in the sense that I’m no longer afraid to put my neck on the chopping block; bad in that the highs of writing (landing a good agent, landing a good book deal) are terrific, but they mean no more than what they are (an opportunity) instead of a giddy statement about my worth as a writer. It’s taken a lot of the glee out of it.
It’s taken me a long time to get to this place. A lifetime, but who’s counting? I’ve survived personal rejections, rejections on my writing, rejections from agents, editors, contest judges, all of which used to gutter me. Many years ago, three days from going into labor with my daughter, I was shot down by an agent I’d been wooing. Between the hormones, the disappointment, and the sheer exhaustion of being enormously pregnant, I didn’t stop crying for two days. Later, when my romance series was published and glowing reviews came pouring in, it was the naysayers I remember, the ones who faulted the premise or didn’t like the heroines, or who dismissed the entire series as “trashy.”
Back then, I was foolish enough to read reviews. Now, I know better. It’s none of my business what other people think of me as a person or a writer. Most of the time, their opinion is a reflection of their own worldview and has little to do with me. If someone likes my work, it makes me worry about living up to their expectations in the future. If they don’t like it, it makes me sad and angry for about thirty seconds. Either way, I don’t learn anything, and I’m not the better for it.
Again, this kind of Zen was hard-won. I read a lot on the subject of handling rejection, especially at the beginning of my career when, quite frankly, I sucked. Most writers suck when they first start writing. We’re so bad, we don’t even know how bad we are. But the more we write, the more we read, the better we get at our craft. That’s why “true writers,” in my opinion, aren’t necessarily those with the most talent. Rather, they are those who have a genuine compulsion to write—a compulsion so strong, they’re willing to hazard the demoralizing, soul-crushing, bank-account-killing, Life As An Author obstacle course to get where they want to go.
Everything I’m telling you about surviving rejection as a writer can be applied to your life. Everything. Are you trying to muster the nerve to ask someone out? Submitting an academic dissertation? Going for a job promotion? Make friends with rejection by welcoming it. With every cut of the sword, you become stronger. Suffer enough rejection, and you’ll never again hesitate to go for what you want. Less determined people will fall by the wayside, but you’ll still be there, right there, a little bruised, perhaps, but confident—indeed, unstoppable—in the knowledge that you are afraid of nothing.
Eleanor Roosevelt: you must do the thing you think you cannot do.
And you must do it over and over again, no matter the consequences.
Here’s how you’re going to get through it:
Understand why rejection hurts. Back when we wandered the forest primeval, our survival was predicated on our ability to remain safely within a group. Expulsion from that group (hello, high school) was tantamount to death. We made ourselves very agreeable in order not to risk rejection, expulsion, being eaten. Now, of course, our circumstances are different, but our brains never caught up. On an emotional level, they make no distinction between the forest primeval and a stinging Goodreads review. Rejection feels just as scary and “death-like” now as it must have been then. No wonder Texas cheerleader moms go bananas and try to kill the competition.
Remember the following: for every new idea, ten percent will hate it, eighty percent will be indifferent toward it, and ten percent will love it. You are never ever EVER going to win them all. Case in point: read Amazon reviews for your favorite book of all time. Some will love it as much as you did. Others (and yes, it shocks me, too) will hate the story so much, you’ll find yourself wondering if you actually read the same book. We don’t see the world as the world is. We see the world as we are. Get that tattooed somewhere you can read it every single day of your life.
Avoid falling into the black sucking hole of your thoughts. As odd, unlikely, and simplistic as it sounds, the following piece of advice has helped me through many dark nights of the soul. When you feel the mental storm clouds gathering, ask yourself: are these thoughts useful? That’s it. Are these thoughts useful? There’s magic in that word, useful. You could have just as easily asked yourself if these thoughts were true (which will send you right down that hole as you endlessly debate the truthfulness of your thoughts) or “fair,” but nothing gets to the heart of the matter more succinctly and effectively as useful. It’s an automatic detour with a complimentary mental health smoothie. Feel free to use it in all areas of your life.
People whose egos are too fragile to handle rejection are a pitiful lot. What is the point of living if you don’t dare, if you don’t get out of your comfort zone, if you don’t at long last say, f*** it, I don’t care what anyone thinks?
This is a fairly American way of viewing the world, by the way. In the East, one’s life doesn’t belong to oneself; it belongs to the family, the community. In the West, we are aggressively independent, perhaps to a fault. Yet too many people continue to live constricted lives of quiet desperation. Vow to yourself now that you won’t be one of them.
When’s the last time you did something that scared you, that challenged you? Comment below.
Excellent advice!