On rejection
Are you sending your work out enough?
Hi, I’m Kate. Ask an Author is an advice column for authors at all stages of writing, publishing, and hand-wringing. Have a question? Fill out this form and I’ll answer it in a future response!
I run Ask an Author entirely on donations, to keep information about writing and publishing free and available to all. THANK YOU to my paid subscribers who make this possible!! If you benefit from reading Ask an Author and are able to make a contribution, please consider supporting the work that I do! <3
Dear all,
I just got back from a month in California (a dream!) and while I was waiting in line to board a ferry to the Channel Islands, I overheard a group of friends discussing whether they’re “sharers” who tell others about what’s going on in their lives. One woman said: “I don’t tell anyone about my rejections. Why would I want to talk about that?”
I thought to myself, “I bet she’s a writer.” And lo and behold, I later heard her tell someone else on the boat that she’s a novelist, lol.
I didn’t have a chance to talk to her (so many dolphins, so little time!) but I’ve been thinking a lot recently about rejection and wanted to write about it here before diving back into answering all your excellent questions (keep ‘em coming!). Recently I had a short story accepted (!!!!!!!!!) and when I opened the email from the journal, I just assumed it was a rejection because duh. Then it seemed like it was going to be a super kind rejection all about how much the editorial board loved the story (those emails are so nice to get and also extra crushing). Only that “thanks but no thanks” line never came and I was so confused??? It’s such a surprise when a yes lands in my inbox, where it seems like it doesn’t belong.
I’m sharing all this because while, like the novelist on the boat, I too loathe talking about my rejections, I think the quietness with which we often weather our no’s means people can get the wrong idea about how many attempts it can take before that elusive yes comes along.
I hear sometimes from people who’ll tell me about one application or one submission or one contest or one attempt they’ve made to secure an opportunity and I . . . I don’t know how to put this any better than just saying it! Those of you putting all of your eggs into a very tiny basket need to send your stuff to more places.
This doesn’t mean I’m saying to rush the process. The opposite! I’ve written previously about how many (most) writers (myself included) send their work out too early, before it’s had time to really marinate and become its absolute best:
"When should I start querying?"
It doesn’t benefit anyone if you send your work out before it’s ready. Or willy-nilly without doing your research. You want to give careful consideration to what truly has the potential to be a good fit.
But no matter how much you’ve worked on something and how ready it is for the world, it’s still no guarantee. Every journal and program and agent and publisher and contest and internship and job is overwhelmed with submissions. Talented people are rejected ALL THE TIME. A “no” is not the final word on your abilities or what people think of you. It’s just a thing. That happens. To all of us. You review your materials, review your work, keep polishing, keep improving, and keep putting yourself out there. There’s no shortcut and no other way to get a yes than to wade through a miserable swamp of no’s to get there.
Say you get rejected from the one perfect MFA program you’d applied to. So you don’t get an MFA. :( But what if you’d applied to more schools, covered more of a range of programs, and gotten into one of them? I was rejected from PhD programs and now I have a PhD. I was rejected from agents and now I have two of them. I was rejected from publishers and now I have ten novels with a great publisher I’ve loved working with. Agented authors still get rejected, published authors still get rejected, everyone who’s applying to anything is going to get rejected. It’s painful and demoralizing and I wish there were some way around it, but it’s a part of any creative industry—any industry at all. The important thing is not to let it define you or derail you or stop you from trying again.
Sometimes you do have to throw in the towel. Sometimes you have to move on. I’m not saying the goal here is to make yourself miserable. But if you get a rejection from that “dream” agent or a no from that “amazing” contest, it’s JUST ONE THING. It’s not the only thing. It shouldn’t get to define the rest of your creative life.
You keep working, and you keep submitting. Not just this book, but the next one. Not just this job or internship you’d desperately wanted, but another one that might open up new doors, or different doors, or provide you another way in. It’s really, really hard to break into any field if you don’t give yourself a fair shot. If you don’t apply to things because you don’t want to be rejected, then you’ve already taken yourself out of the running. You’ve said no to yourself before someone else can. The end result is the same. You’re not published in the journal you never submitted to. You don’t have the opportunity you never applied to. Only in these scenarios, the person who said no to you is yourself.
This doesn’t mean publishing is a meritocracy and all you have to do is work hard enough or be “good” enough and you’ll make it. LOL I wish. The cream does NOT rise to the top and the next person who says that to me like it’s a compliment is going to get an earful. Publishing is racist, sexist, homophobic, narrow-minded, regressive, conservative, afraid of change, and highly risk-avoidant. The amount of quality material that never sees the light of day is staggering. We can’t self-improve our way into a whole new systen.
But/and if you want to be in that system anyway, it can help to go into it knowing you’re going to have to knock on a lot of doors before one opens even the slightest bit. If you sit on your work forever, and then put yourself out there once… maybe twice… what a tremendous amount of pressure that one contest or one agent or one submission or one application or one opportunity now carries. This is a numbers game, and it really does only take one yes. Everyone you see who’s ever gotten that yes has ALSO heard a million no’s — they just aren’t sharing it on social media or shouting it to the world. Like the woman in line at the ferry said, why would we want to keep talking about the sh*tty parts of our jobs?
There can be valuable information to learn from all those no’s. Queried 100 agents and got 100 form letters? Your query letter and opening pages aren’t doing their job. 20 agents read your full manuscript and 10 said it was too long and the other 10 ghosted you? Your manuscript might benefit from a thorough edit (been there!). Applying to programs and no one seems to understand your materials? You might need to do more hand-holding to steer the selection committee in the right direction. Some rejections are useless. It wasn’t to be, and you move on. Some rejections, or the accumulation of those rejections, give you insight into whether you’re on the right path or if it’s time to make some changes.
But you can’t get that info if you don’t send things out enough times to get some actual info out of the experience. So apply to more places. Send out more work. Do the thing that scares you. Most of all, keep going!
- Kate
Got a question? Click here and I’ll answer it in a future response! Want to work one-on-one? Find me at Broad Editorial for query consultations, manuscript editing, and book coaching. Thank you for sharing, subscribing, and supporting Ask an Author!