How Rejection Changes the Writer’s Heart
Why pliability, not hardiness, determines your resilience
It’s no surprise that the writer’s life is full of rejection.
You write a few words, stop, and then think how idiotic you sound so you backspace until you’re left with the dreaded blank page once again. So you try again, replacing words with ones that have more syllables, but you delete that too because now you’re just being a pretentious git.
But once you finally get the words right, and — bless the day! — you finish your novel; it’s now time to face draft, after draft, after draft of revisions. Because no matter what you do, it’s never good enough for you or for them.
Finally, when you think you’re ready to send it out into the world, the soul-diminishing process of querying agents has befallen your path. Hundreds of queries and stretches of time just waiting for a rejection or no response at all.
But let’s say you’re fortunate enough, and you get a yes (that’s right, just one is considered lucky); there’s the battle of getting an editor who then sets you on the journey of the endless cycle of drafts. Again. Well, until publication.
And even then, your battle is not done.
Because it’s now marketing, you have to worry about while the constant flow of doubt permeates every action you take because, really, will anyone even like your book? Will they even care what you have to say? If they do, can you write another one just as well? Do you even have it in you to write another one?
So, when I hear authors talk about their sad lives of rejection and living it myself, I used to think a writer’s heart must be made of steel. That I needed to harden mine just to be a writer. If I wanted to withstand the judgment of others — and the even harsher self-critiques — then it must be beaten into the strongest material ever made because any normal heart would have been squashed to a pulp before the first word was ever written down.
Though recently, strangely enough, I think I was wrong. I’ve begun to believe a human heart, so full of emotion, could never survive in such a cold cage without shrivelling up. No, in the case of writers, I believe it’s more prudent to think of a writer’s heart to grow in its pliability.
Because with every self-deprecating thought, query, rejection, draft marked in red, the rubber-like quality of a writer’s heart becomes more prominent, withstanding every tear, scratch, and beating.
And when a particular rejection slices your heart and the blood cascades down, pooling in the bottomless void, it’s the writer’s suturing skills that are tested. The more times you experience this — the more times you bleed — your fingers become nimbler, quicker, your mind steadier as you stitch your heart back to its rubber, pliable, tender state.
Because the actual test of a writer’s heart isn’t to lock it away from feeling but to have it bounce back with even more life.
Check out my blog, In Worn Pages, for more content about reading, writing, and books.
