Rejection Hurts
But you can make it hurt less
You get a form letter or email advising you that your article or book doesn’t meet the needs of the publisher. You are encouraged to submit elsewhere. Oh, by the way, best wishes, and thank you for considering us.
How Do You React?
Counter-rejection. “These (fill in your favorite expletive) will never hear from me again. I hope they publish the worst books in publishing history. I hope they fail. I hope they get swallowed up by a corporate conglomerate.”
Grandiose Thinking. “I’ll show them. I’ll publish a bestseller/Nobel Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner. Then they’ll be sorry.”
Emotional Self-punishment. “Why did I ever think I could write? Now I’ve exposed myself to humiliation. I’ll never do this again.”
In any of these scenarios or its many gradations and variants, you are likely to keep on reading the rejection letter until you have every comma memorized.
Whichever of these reactions you adopt, underneath it all, you hurt because rejection hurts. “But why so much?” I would ask myself as I glared at the form letter.
Some might not think that getting a rejection letter from someone you don’t know could induce strong emotions. As a writer, I know that these messages have immense potential…
