Rejection Letters

How many times can someone endure the word no? Is there a psychological limit, a breaking point, when you finally surrender to the relentless barrage of negative responses and just give up? For the past nine months, I've asked myself these very same questions. After submitting my manuscript to numerous editors and agents, I've received over twenty-five rejection letters.

Some of these rejections created a pinhole of hope in my overcast sky. They encouraged me to press on, with phrases like: "This has great potential, but I'm not taking on any new clients," or "This story has promise, but it's not what we're looking for." Unfortunately, pinholes of hope and kind rejection letters don't get you published.

To survive any kind of disappointment, you have to be tenacious. It's a requirement. I believe determination is just as important as talent. Almost every successful writer has encountered hundreds of rejections, but they didn't give up. We write because we love it. Writing is essential to us, and our lives feel incomplete without it. If I haven't written in a few days, I automatically feel restless. Once I put pen to paper, my peace returns. I have to write. It's a part of my DNA, embedded in my blood and bones. A steady torrent of rejection letters always discourages me, but they never quell my passion to writing.

Every time I take the five-minute walk to my local post office, with my manuscript cradled lovingly in my arms, I say an internal mantra: I believe in this book. I love this book. It will find a loving home. Each new manuscript is another child I've given birth to, a part of me, reluctantly released into the world. Sometimes my hands shake a little, as I give my beloved manuscript to the postal worker. It's part separation anxiety, part paranoia, and an overactive imagination that causes this reaction. I dream up worse case scenarios for my manuscript's fate. Will it get lost in the bowels of the publishing house mailroom? Will the editor find it revoltingly awful? Will he or she laugh at moments that weren't meant to be funny? Will I even get a response?

Simply put, I completely freak myself out. By the time I get home, I've pulled myself back from the brink of a nervous breakdown by doing deep breathing and repeating my mantra fifty times.

All joking aside, the writing business is a challenging one. There's nothing enjoyable about waiting months or even a year for a response from an agent or an editor. Especially when the dreaded "r " word is the only one you've heard lately.

Maybe the secret to enduring rejection and not giving up is hidden within the word itself. The Latin root "re" is defined as again and "ject" means to throw. The word rejection seems to inherently imply that we should throw ourselves back in the game again, giving up is not an option.

If we redefine how we view rejection, it could have a positive impact on our lives. Instead of viewing it as a defeat, we should see it as a rebirth, a renewal, another chance. We can't count ourselves out. This time the answer could be a yes, but we'll never know if we don't try.