Stephen King saved his rejection notes on a nail on the wall.
When he had so many that the nail dropped, he used a spike instead. And kept writing.
He took it nicely, I think.
Most people fear rejection, because when you send something out and hope for acceptance, like your manuscript, and you get it back, rejected, it feels like being rejected yourself.
You feel rejected.
And the pain can be compared to that of hammering a spike through your kneecap.
Especially, if the rejection comes from somebody close to us.
I've never forgotten a message I saw in a forum for writers.
A woman wrote that she'd decided to write four books that year, and that she'd told her family about it.
Her daughter laughed and said, "You haven't managed to write one book the last four years. How likely is it that you'll write four this year?"
Ouch, that must have hurt.
How Do You Deal with that Kind of Pain?
It's a tough one.
You can't tell everybody else to stop rejecting your ideas or your manuscripts, so you have to work on yourself.
My husband is a psychotherapist, and he uses a method called Rational Emotional Behavior Therapy (REBT), invented by Dr. Albert Ellis.
REBT uses an ABC method of dealing with unwanted emotions.
A stands for the Accelerator, the event that sets off the emotion.
B is your Beliefs.
C is the Consequence.
Let's say that you've self-published a book and gotten a one-star review.
Ouch, that hurt. You have 477 5-star reviews, but the only one you can focus on now is the 1-star.
A is the one-star review.
C in this case is that you're depressed. You've worked so hard, writing and editing your book, and now you feel useless. Rejected. Worthless. Good-for-nothing.
Why is that?
We Have to Look at Your Beliefs
What kind of thoughts flew through your head when you saw that review?
- This is horrible. Everybody should love my book.
- What if more people follow his lead? What if people hate my book? That's terrible.
- I knew it. My book is bad. All the other people were just being nice to me, but I suck as a writer. I'm horrible. I can just as well give this up.
And then you get depressed.
Because you (the example 'you' that is) believe that in order for your book to be good, then everybody must love it.
And in order for you to be a good writer, then everybody must love your book.
But that's not true.
Even the most famous books have haters. And even the worst books have fans.
What people think about your book says absolutely nothing about you. Nothing. It says something about their taste for what they read.
Like if I ask you, "Do you like chicken?"
Now, if you're a vegan, you will wrinkle your nose in disgust and say, "No!"
What does that say about the chicken? Nothing.
If you're hungry right now, and you love chicken, you would say, "Of course."
What does that say about the chicken? Absolutely nothing again.
If a person says you're a bad writer, does that make you a bad writer?
Not at all. Just as little as if a person told you that you were a microphone. That's absurd, right? You're not a microphone, just because somebody says so.
You ARE not your work.
And you ARE not what people say, even if they are family.
My first short story was rejected. First by my boyfriend back then. "Nobody is going to understand that," he told me.
I sent it to the Danish Radio, and they corrected a spelling error (fittness haha) and sent it back to me. They told me it didn't fit into their program, but recommended a Danish magazine instead.
And that magazine accepted it. I definitely did a happy dance when I got that phone call.
But Back to the Woman and Her Daughter...
No, perhaps that woman hadn't written one book the last four years.
Does that mean she cannot write four books this year? Of course not.
Unless you believe that a human being cannot change, and that things are forever as they were. And in that case that mindset says more about you (the daughter) than it does about the mother.
Of course she can change.
Of course she can write four books.
It's hard when your first opposition is your family, but there's only one way to deal with it: prove them wrong.
Have You Ever Felt Rejected?
How did you deal with it?
Did it make you stronger or weaker?
Did you change something because of that rejection?
Share your thoughts about rejection.