Rejection Redux

Tonight is my last class for this semester's Writing for Children's Books at RISD, and it’s rejection night. That’s right: this is the evening that I bring in my teetering pile of rejection letters and my students look aghast for a little while. A depressing way to end? I don’t think so at all.

They’re going to get rejection letters. Everyone does. The more rejection letters they get, the closer they’ll be to an acceptance. Each one is a necessary step. Each a rite of passage. Each an opportunity to revise and try again. And rejection letters do tend, after a while, to evolve, as I explain in class.

There’s always a student who says, “You actually keep them?!”

Of course I do. I was sifting through the pile this morning and found six “positive” rejections for a picture book I’d shelved some time ago. Now I’m thinking it might be time to get that text out and revise it. Take a good hard look after letting it ferment and see what I can do to make it viable. Apparently there’s something there to work with, which I wouldn’t have considered without the letters.

As I was researching author rejection statistics, I also came across this great little interview with the wonderful Kate diCamillo who apparently was rejected 397 times (sources vary on the number, and I saw as many as 500 times) before she found a  home for the 2001 Newbery Honor book Because of Winn Dixie.

So today I thought I’d repost my thoughts on rejection from last year:

Rejection is What You Make It

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
• show your developmental arc as a 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.