Dealing with Rejection Letters

If you are a writer pursuing the possibility of getting your work published, there is one constant you will encounter. You are going to get rejected. If you're a persistent writer, you're going to get rejected repeatedly. If you are a hardheaded, unrepentant writer who refuses to take no for an answer, you will eventually be able to wallpaper your entire house with rejection letters.

Look, even Dr. Seuss was rejected somewhere between a dozen and 30 times for the Cat in the Hat depending on what source you believe.

So my advice to those just getting started in the business is to accept the fact that you're going to get rejected and move on. Just keep honing your craft, learning the process of submissions and sending out queries because if you actually have a decent enough product to sell (and an article is really nothing more than a product to an editor) then eventually somebody besides your mother is going to take notice of your work and offer you a spot in their publication.

Don't go taking it all so personally even if American Girl Magazine rejected that wonderful story about your daughter's Girl Scout troop's attempts to save the whales in Zimbabwe despite the seemingly perfect fit for their "Girls Saving the Planet" column. (Yes, I know there are no whales in Zimbabwe. Work with me here, people.) Maybe it's because they ran an article just like it last month or their editorial calendar is full to overflowing until the year 2012. Or maybe it's because the current editor suffers from a chronic case of whale-o-phobia. Or maybe it's because, if you look at their Writer's Market listing, they don't work with all that many freelancers. You would have known that if you'd taken the time to do a little research in the first place.

So what do you do next when someone says, "No"? Hop right on back into that saddle and ride onto the next pub (and what I mean by pub in this case is magazine, not saloon) while continuing to learn the process. I would suggest a little trip to the magazine rack at the bookstore because I can't say it enough times, read your target market or at least be familiar enough with it to know what they publish. Don't be sending car repair articles to Woman's Day, unless it's how a woman can fix her own car with a pair of panty hose and a nail file. Or a gardening article to Car and Driver, unless you just happen to know how someone who grows soybeans that are processed into the world's most innovative and environmentally friendly engine oil on the planet.

So write, submit, rinse and repeat and someday, it'll be your byline on that magazine at the check stand at Walmart. Then you can just casually mention to the clerk that the reason you are buying eight copies is because you're featured on page 18 and need to send clips to your family back in East Podunkville. You know she'll be impressed.