Get a Grip on Rejection

Writer: Carrie Knowles

I finish my taxes.

Mercury is in Retrograde. It doesn’t matter if you believe in astrology or not, it’s just a good time to reflect, step back and reanalyze who you are and what you’re doing. What you want to do.

Although I hate doing my business taxes, it always gives me a chance to put the past year in perspective. Let’s just say some years are better than others.

By the time I get everything organized, added up, and ready to send to my accountant, my office is in shambles, the impact of 2020 on my professional life has been glaringly revealed on my spread sheet, and the last thing I want to do is write. So, I take the rest of the day to clean my office and throw away a few things.

It’s been a few years since I’ve taken the time to purge all the bills that are more than five years old. My file cabinet is jammed with the past. COVID has had me hemmed in, and I’m feeling the itch to move on with something. Anything. Throwing out old bills feels like a decent start on getting my life in order and moving forward.

I fill one garbage can, take it to the recycling bin, then start working my way through the rest of my file cabinet.

Time to move on…

That’s when I discover a three-inch folder filled with rejection slips. Rejections from agents, publishers, editors, magazines, you name it. Rejections.

My first response to the heft of it all is: How could there be so many? My second, whatever kept me going? Then finally, why would I keep all this bad news?

I found books that were rejected so many times that I tore them apart, made new books from them, or just trashed what I had written and moved on to something completely different. Not all of the rejections were horrible. Many were encouraging and said things like good luck or try us again. No matter how encouraging, they all ended with: Sorry, not for us.

The first time I sorted through the file, taking the time (what was I thinking) to reread each rejection, I trashed all the form letters and clung to the ones with personal notes saying they liked my writing, but just not this story, or that character, or my voice.

I make a cup of tea and one-by-one, reread the good rejections, make peace with them and throw them away as well. Don’t let rejections hang on or hang you up.

Encouraging or not. They were all rejections. Why was I keeping them? What about having them around made my life as a writer richer? Answer: Nothing.

There are often things you can learn from a rejection. But, once learned, it’s important to move on.

I once wrote a story that I knew was good. Really good. I called it “Selling Fish” and at the heart of it, tried to answer the question of why we are here, and what are we supposed to do with our lives. I sent it to a fairly good journal and got a scathing rejection. So, I found a lesser journal to send it to, and they rejected it. By this time, my confidence in the worth of my story, as well as my worth as a writer, was diminishing. So, I sent it to some very small, not at all prestigious journal, and they rejected it.

The rejection came on one of those highly wrought days where I probably had a flat tire, burnt my breakfast toast, and maybe had words with one of our kids or my husband. Doesn’t matter. Here’s the punch line. The rejection from this third journal made me angry. Really angry.

So, I sat down at my computer and tried to find the best, most prestigious journal in existence that published short stories and paid real money for them: Glimmer Train. I felt brash and bold, and as I pressed send, I almost dared them to reject my fine work.

That was 1999. Twenty-two years and seven published books ago.

“Selling Fish,” won first place in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest.

When you get a rejection, read it, think about it to see if there’s anything to learn from it, then throw it away. Don’t ever let your rejections define you…or take up precious space in your files!

Move on.

About the Writer

Carrie Knowles has published four novels, (Lillian’s Garden, Ashoan’s Rug, A Garden Wall in Provence, and The Inevitable Past), a collection of short fiction (Black Tie Optional), a memoir (The Last Childhood), and a writing workbook (A Self-Guided Workbook and Gentle Tour on Learning How to Write). She writes a regular personal perspectives column for Psychology Today: Shifting Forward. Her latest novel, A Musical Affair, will be released by Owl Canyon Press in May 2021. She was the 2014 North Carolina Piedmont Laureate in Short Fiction.

Website: cjanework.com

Writer’s podcast episode, HERE.