Rejection is Good: Make It Work For You
Famous Rejections Prove You Are In Good Company
How rejections help your writing career
Rejections are Good
You are a writer, an artist. What inevitably follows from being a great artist, personified in the great Mel Brooks movie, History of the World, is “the critic.’ For those of you who haven’t seen the movie there is a scene where “caveman” creates art, “critic caveman” pees on art.
I’ll save you the suspense. There will be critics who do not like your work. You won’t be the first artist to be rejected and you will not be the last. To prove my point (and make you feel better) I would like to share a few famous authors who were trashed by literary agents and/or publishers. Excerpts are from the literary companion, Rotten Rejections, by Andre Bernard (1990, PushCart Press). Rotten Rejections is a fun read, btw. The book rejections highlighted are a bit older but extremely entertaining.
Lee Pennington is a famous, pulitzer-prize nomineed poet and the author of over 23 books. He was published in over 300 magazines.
According to the book, Rotten Rejections, Mr Pennington was:
“…rejected so many thousand times that in one six-month period he papered all four walls of a room with rejection slips. (“I loved getting the 8 1/2 x 11 rejections because they covered more space.”)
You may not have heard of Lee Pennington but how about the prolific, Pearl S Buck, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Good Earth? Ms Buck had a rejection that read,
“Regret that the American public is not interested in anything on China.”
LOLOLOLOL!
William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, got a rejection letter that read,
“It does not seem to us that you have been wholly successful in working out an admittedly promising idea.”
This LitHub article lists several famous books and the number of times each were rejected. One, Chicken Soup for the Soul by Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield was rejected 144 times! We all know how that turned out, don’t we? Today, for example, they actually make their own brand of soup!
Now that you know that these famous, fantastically successful authors got loads of rejections, you know why rejections are good. It is because rejection puts you in good company. With your first rejection, you are part of the club.
Rejections help your writing career
Rejections give you a thicker skin. A thicker skin means that future criticism will not hurt you. If you can not be hurt by criticism, you will continue to create without fear. Your creativity will not be harnessed but will be unlocked, unleashed. You will be a better writer because you won’t be held back. You won’t edit yourself because you simply won’t care about potential backlash. You are free to create what you were meant to create. Your writing will get better and better.
The One Word Negative Amazon Review
I bet you thought I would say that rejection may help you improve the quality of what you already wrote. Nope, I don’t believe it. A trusted editor will improve your work, a critic simply offers an opinion and dashes off to the next piece of art to criticize. I once got an Amazon review for my first book that was one word. ‘Meh’ was the word. Not helpful. Not hurtful either. How can I be hurt by a reviewer who can’t come up with any more words than ‘meh?’ By the same token, the reviewer is always entitled to his/her opinion. But you are entitled to let it bounce right off your back.
Once piece of advice for you regarding Amazon reviews - don’t ever try to argue and post a reply to a negative review. #1 It’s bad form #2 You will never change a critic’s mind #3 It looks bad to potential readers of your book.
The best advice on reading a criticism is to read one of your nice reviews and go on with your day. You could always print it out and wallpaper your wall like Lee Pennington did!
How have you guys handled criticism of your writing? Any advice for aspiring authors on handling it?
Share, if you like, a rejection of your own. (I have a folder-full of rejections for my first book!)