Making Rejection Work for You
© Jonathan Ball
It's a sad fact that the writer lives a life of rejection. You know the feeling; after countless hours conceiving, creating, and editing your masterwork, be it an article, short story, novel, poem, or screenplay, you send it out into the world, only to have it returned (at your expense) along with a "Dear John" form letter. It's a crushing feeling, one which has caused many a writer to curl up beneath his or her desk with tail between legs. Rejection hurts your pride, your feelings, and your bank account. Learning to deal with it is often what separates a successful writer from an unsuccessful one.
Next time you get a rejection notice, don't throw it on the fire or use it in a voodoo ritual designed to destroy the sender. Instead, sit down and read it, paying close attention to details.
Think about what a rejection means. Somebody new has read your work - somebody who isn't your friend or a member of your family - somebody with an objective view, a quality that you, as creator, can never hope to have. They have considered it for publication and rejected it. Why?
Different rejections will tell you different things. A common reason for rejecting work is that it was not what the publication is "currently in the market for" or because it did "not meet our editorial needs." This can be a nice way to say that they didn't like it, but it commonly means exactly what it says: that your submission, despite its value as a good piece of writing, wasn't something that the editors could use. Don't let this kind of rejection get you down; it often just means that nothing in particular was wrong with your writing, but rather that circumstances beyond your control (a stockpile of your kind of writing, an editorial move away from such writing) caused your rejection.
Take a look at the publication's guidelines again and make sure that they actually accept the kind of writing you sent them. If there is a copy of the publication at hand or online, take a look at it; would your writing fit alongside the published work, or does it seem out of place? Often when you take a hard look at your writing alongside the writing published in the market that rejected you, you can discover why it was rejected, and know better what kind of writing to submit to them in the future.
