Life
is full of Rejection
Get used to it.
Sorry to burst your happy bubble, but I’m a realist.
Life is rejection.
It starts at an early age when a parent must deny a child,
whether it is during the weaning process, or the extra dessert, or the
potentially dangerous things kids can get into as they grow up. The older we
become the rejections segue into the romantic arena (who hasn’t been crushed by
their crush?), school (last pick in gym class, raise your hand *raises hand*),
and other extracurricular activities such as dance (sorry, not flexible enough),
sports (sorry, not fast or skilled or up to the same level enough), or the arts
(Meh, it’s a picture, albeit a nice picture).
Until finally, when true adulthood arrives, you are writing
your resume for your dream job. You’re happy in the knowledge that they have to
pick you out of the 100 of your fellow job seekers.
But they don’t pick you. Not even an interview, much less a thanks-but-not-for-us
letter.
And without feedback as to how to ‘boost’ your resume to the
top of the stack, what do you do? How can you tailor your resume to fit their
needs? How do you find out what exactly they are looking for?
You don’t. Rejection sucks, doesn’t it?
As a writer I’ve been rejected A LOT, from contest entries
to agents to editors at publishing houses. We’re talking rejections in the THOUSANDS.
The responses have been no response (no response = no, right?) to generic “not
for me” rejections to negative comments, namely “not good enough”.
The hardest part of rejection is to figure out what to do after
having your soul crushed. Do you keep trying? Do you switch gears? Do you give
up? Or do you dig deeper?
I’ve done all of the above. I think writing historical
romance to fantasy to middle grade to picture/chapter books and, finally, back
to fantasy could be considered ‘switching’ gears.
And no, I haven’t found that elusive magic elixir. . . yet.
After a long writing break that segued into rejoining the
working force, I think I’m ready to take baby steps into the writing arena
again. Rejuvenating my blog is a start. Maybe I’ll be able to dig deeper into
my soul to pull the rawness out of my hidden psyche to craft a story.
To paraphrase (actually, I’m brutally ripping off the
concept, not paraphrasing) one of my favorite shows, FORGED IN FIRE, “It’s not
what the rejection does to you, but what you do when you receive the rejection.
I don’t care who you are, rejection hurts.
But when rejection happens…it’s how you deal with it that molds
you into the person you can become.
Peace,
MAGolla
