Sunday, October 10, 2010

My thoughts about rejection.

It's going to be a time of rejections for me. I have submitted and even pitched my novel to various publishers.

In the last few days I had one friend see a bad review of her book that paralyzed her and kept her from working on her current book. Another submitted an experimental query and was rejected in ten minutes, and she laughed about it.

Are either of these people better than the other? No. One is newly published, one will have her book out next year.

Am I speaking a little hypocritical? Yes. Because I've been in both of thier places. I've had that rejection that I brushed off with a smile and I've had that devastating critique that could have paralyzed me. Actually it did for about an hour. Then through talking about it with a friend I realized that I had done my best on my MS and that it shouldn't matter to me what thay thought.

I kept the business card of the critiquer and on a quiet morning I burned that card into a pile of ashes, put the ashes in a baggie and tacked ot to my wall. Why? Because after that period of time where I bemoaned what they said and after what I learned from the experience I needed a reminder of the lesson.

Yea rejection is going to hurt, it's how you let it either spur you into action or let it keep you from working that matters.

I definately won't be perfect, I'll still have my moments of doubt. I'm a writer it's my nature. However whenever I get those future rejections I hope I will remember the lessons learned and move on.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rejection is terrible. I have to keep reminding myself that all the greats had them and many already published authors still get them, so we are not alone. :O)
Check out: http://scribbleandedit.blogspot.com/2010/10/not-amused.html

DL Curran said...

Great reminder to take rejection in stride. Sometimes that's wicked hard, but like Madeleine said, I just try to keep it in perspective.

New here - came to you by way of Elle's blogfest. Are you posting later? I'll try to stop be this evening or tomorrow. Have a great day! :)

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