Fiction Scribe

Last week, I talked about the fear of rejection popping in every now and then while getting ready to make submissions to publishers. However, it’s not something I’m horribly worried about at this point. Yes, it invades my mind, but it’s not keeping me from pursuing getting published.

Rejection happens a lot to many writers. It can sting, but it’s a growing experience. I had posted up a question for my fellow 451press bloggers asking about rejections. A few people, ones I mentioned in part one and those I’ll mention here, responded.

Bobbi has a quote in this post about rejection from the book Writing Brave and Free by Ted Kooser and Steve Cox:

“Build rejection into your expectations; plan to have magazines reject your writing,and treat it as a gift when you get published. As hard as it is to accept, every failure is a chance to learn.”

I honestly expected a little piece about rejection I could agree with and perhaps gain a bit more perspective about rejection from, but instead I found that quote. A quote which made me a bit angry, truth be told.

I’m sorry, but no. I will not build rejection into my expectations. If you are in any way a believer in The Secret (which basically says you will attract what you think about most) then you’ll agree with me. Yes, rejections have and will be sent to me, but I won’t expect them to come. I’ll merely trudge along if they do.

Expect rejection? No. I have too much optimism left in me (apparently) to go in with the expectation of being rejected. That’s entirely too depressing a thing to do, in my opinion.

Samantha Schwartz’s Australian Guide to Getting Published lists several reasons you might not get published, which might make you feel better the next time you get a rejection letter.

“The publishers:

*Don’t publish those kinds of books. For example, it is futile to send a New Age manuscript to a publisher of high school text books.

*Genuinely don’t have space in the list for more books (budget constraints).

*Think the writing is fine, but that the book would need expensive promotion, more than the publisher can afford.

*Think the writing isn’t strong enough and don’t have the time, interest, or capital to work with the author.

*Think that the ideas, or the content, isn’t sufficiently original or contributes nothing new to the subject area from which it derives.

*Think that the author doesn’t have a sufficiently high profile in their subject are. This is especially true of poetry and some anthology publishing which is traditionally very hard to sell.

Or,

*Think that the writing is just awful or the subject totally unmarketable.”

Okay, so not all of those may make you feel better, but now you see that rejections aren’t always sent just because “you and your writing suck.”

So don’t worry, and keep plugging away. I certainly will.