Normally, I dislike blanket statements, universal “truths” and stereotypes but in the case of rejection, I feel safe in making the statement that all writers have (or soon will) experience it. Literary Icons were famously rejected over and over again such as Stephen King (for Carrie), Joseph Heller (for Catch-22) and George Orwell (for Animal Farm). The list of beloved authors who were told their work was subpar goes on to include Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson and Anne Frank. (Seriously, one editor said this of the Diary of Anne Frank. “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.”)
So it’s confirmed. Rejection, failure, and the ensuing possibility of disappointment seem to happen to the best of us. Writers or non-writers, we get passed over for promotions, get dumped, lose all our money etc etc. As a writer, one might say, I am in the company of the greats after receiving rejection letter number gazillion yesterday, but I still have that old familiar feeling, which leads me to question:
If I am truly in a state of enlightenment, shouldn’t my status of inner peace be strong enough to shrug off another rejection letter without a downward spiral into self-doubt and negativity?
Leo Baubata, one of my favorite bloggers, recently posted to his ZenHabits blog a list of ways that he feels failure in his life and how he takes steps (any step will do, he says) to relieve the “soul-tearing effects of failure.” Another cool blogger gave me some advice about rejection, thanks Maria Brophy. She says rejection is an illusion and that the word itself should be removed from the vocabulary (replaced with deferred). I like the fact that Leo Baubata feels sad about failure too (not that I want anyone to feel sad) and that Maria Brophy feels we are powerful enough to delete a whole word from the common vernacular and, if I am truly honest, I like being in any group that includes Hemingway…so I am starting to feel better already.
I smile to myself as I type the following news: my story was deferred by the editor of one literary journal but I am taking steps to submit it somewhere else. Thanks bloggers, needed that pep talk today!
PS The Beatles were once told, “They had no future in show business.” The laugh out loud rejection/deferral list could go on forever…