When Sharing Your Work Is Harder Than Writing
How To Bounce Back From Rejection
Submitting your writing is a daunting process. It can carry a sense of doubt about your words, your ability to write, and even yourself. You’ve poured your soul into your writing. Yet one little word stops you from submitting.
Rejection.
Rejection bears the banner of a bad, even ugly word. Yet rejection is part of every writer’s journey.
The first rejection will always sting the most
The writing fairytale is the story of the novel submitted and picked up by the first publisher, which becomes a bestseller. Like all fairytales, this story also has a happy ending — and the author was loved by many and wrote many other successful books.
But your first piece has been rejected. The fairytale bubble popped, leaving you with a multitude of questions.
What was wrong with my writing?
Why didn’t they like it?
What’s wrong with me?
Am I not good enough?
However, you must remind yourself that the fairytale is far from the norm. For every fairytale, there are thousands of writers who face rejection after rejection before succeeding.
Why do writers fear rejection?
Writers invest themselves in their work, making it is hard to separate their words from themselves. Writing is the baring of our souls, so the rejection feels too personal.
To counter this, it’s essential to separate your sense of self from your writing. Your writing is a by-product, but it is not you and all that you are.
In your life, you wear many hats — parent, colleague, child, teacher, student. While they all make up an aspect of self, they are not your total self. Criticism of one is not a reflection of the other. So too, your writing is another hat you wear.
How do you know when your work is ready?
Writing words of wisdom will advise you to submit your best work. But how do you know when a piece is ready?
Sometimes it’s a feeling — the piece resonates, and you will know it's ready, or you might feel there is nothing else you can do to improve it.
If you find yourself continually tinkering with a word here, a sentence there, chances are the piece is ready, but your fear of rejection is helping you to procrastinate.
No piece of writing is ever perfect — even published books have mistakes. It’s time to let go of your inner perfectionist and submit.
You can’t control rejection
Rejection can arrive with a thundering silence or as a standard form letter. Either way, you’re in the dark wondering what was wrong with the piece you labored over.
It could have been many reasons — many that don’t reflect the standard of your writing.
- They’re received a ton of submissions, and yours simply didn’t stand out.
- It’s not a good fit for their list.
- They’ve published or committed to publishing, something similar.
- The article about a dog you submitted — the editor’s dog just died, and they can’t bear to read it, or maybe they are a cat person.
How can you gain more confidence?
A good critique group will allow your writing and confidence to shine, while gently pointing out places your writing can improve. Critique groups can give you honest feedback and moral support.
Most importantly, a good critique group will help validate you and your writing, giving you more confidence to submit your work to a broader audience.
Hanging out with other writers, chatting writing and books can refresh your creativity and even nurture your writing spark. Sharing your experience with others and knowing that you are not alone on your writing journey can be enormously helpful.
Don’t let criticism feel like rejection — use it to help you learn
If you do receive feedback along with a rejection, accept the criticism, learn from it, revise your work and send it out again. Make criticism work for you. Embrace it as a chance to learn and grow as a writer.
If you receive feedback, you shouldn’t feel disheartened that your writing didn’t make the grade. It’s not the time to pull up stumps and quit.
Keep improving as a writer; your willingness to learn and improve is your biggest strength.
Feel the fear and do it anyway
Writing can be a numbers game. It’s a bit like playing the lotto — if you never buy a ticket, your chances of winning dwindle to zero. The more times you submit your writing, the greater your chances of receiving an offer of publication. But you’ll never know if fear of rejection stops you from submitting.
For every best-selling author with a legion of fans, others don’t like their work. Whether it’s the genre or the writing style, people have different reading tastes — it’s part of what makes us all unique.
Likewise, your writing will strike a chord with some while leaving others cold. Play the odds game until you find an editor or publication that is a good fit for you.
