Rejection is What You Make It

Firstly: Happy First Blogisheriversy to the Rejectionist who has invited us all to blog about "What Form Rejection Means to Me" .    


My first form rejection made me cry. I think. I really don’t remember it that well, though at the time I probably felt I'd never forget the sting. In the twelve years since then, I’ve had many rejections. Somewhere along the way, ‘positive rejections’ began to outnumber form rejections, and after a time I gathered a few non-rejections—um, I mean ‘acceptances.’ Form letter induced tears have given way to forced laughter, then grim-but-determined smiles, wry sighs, and now indifferent shrugs.

All of this is par for the course. And it’s a challenging course. It’s not for the faint of heart. It will:

·    bamboozle the uninitiated

·    overwhelm the lazy

·    shrivel up the gutless

·    stymie the passive aggressive faster than they can wail, “It’s not my fault, it’s theirs!”

·    quickly teach you whether or not you’re a quitter.

Achieving publication requires:

• guts
• stamina
• passion
• hard work
• vision
• professionalism
• a hearty dose of mindless, blind faith that success is just around the corner… or the next… or the next...
•  the belief that the journey, the lovely people met along the way, and the countless hours spent learning, creating, crafting, revising, and editing are worth the struggle
• niceness.

Glorious and bountiful form rejections:

·   force you to be a better writer

·   teach you to accept rejection (any kind of rejection in *Life!*) with dignity, learn from it, shrug off any residual pain, and bloody just get on with it

·   tell you you’re probably gutsy, strong, passionate, hard-working, accepting, professional, and if you’re not already, at least on the way to being nice. And cool. And dignified. And visionary! And possibly slightly delusional, but that’s ok... You’re a writer.