Reflections on Rejection: From Imperfection to Self Protection

This morning I woke up to another rejection for one of my short stories. For some reason, a lot of them seem to come in the middle of the night. Like editors never sleep, or… are vampires.

I’m very early in my journey as a fiction writer, having completed six short stories with a total word count of around 28,000. I recently got my first acceptance, to a horror anthology that will be published this year. But all around that single acceptance are many more rejections. Eleven so far. And this is exactly as it’s supposed to be, or so I’m told.

Rejection is a way of life when you’re a Creative, and it comes in many different forms. Form letters and passes and "Hated it"s and silence and downward facing thumbs and empathetic red lights. Offense and insults and ignorance and slights. Rejection can come with long knives and short tempers. It can sneak up on you from behind, or look you in the eye as it twists the blade in your softest parts. Rejection sucks, is what it does.

The question is: how do you respond to it?

In his classic book, On Writing, Stephen King writes that when he first started submitting his stories for publication, he saved all his rejection letters on a nail he pounded into the wall. “By the time I was fourteen… the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

That is one hell of an attitude, particularly for someone so young. To rack up and display rejections—something I instinctively still view as failure—is coldblooded and clearheaded and just one more reason why he is and always will be the King.

Maybe some day I’ll respond to rejection with that kind of dispassionate—even proud—acknowledgement of the progress I’m making. But for now, rejection still gets me asking all sorts of unhelpful questions. What’s wrong with my work? What’s wrong with me? What am I even doing? Who do I think I am?

That’s why I’ve had to develop a series of techniques to help me cope with those kneejerk bad thoughts. By employing these in my journey as a Creative, I’ve managed to keep going. And I’m so glad I have. If you struggle with how you respond to rejection, maybe there will be something of use to you here.

1. Just keep working

This is the undisputed champ of moving on from rejection. Why? Because when you’re in the thick of the work, you can’t really focus on anything else. When you’re in the process, you’re not thinking about the outcome. I recommend stacking your projects so you always have something else to work on. When you get a rejection, flip up both those middle fingers, and get back to work.

As I said a couple weeks ago, “What’s next? It’s not the question. It’s the answer.”

2. Learn to love the process

There’s nothing quite so special as feeling like you’ve finished a thing. A painting, a song, a poem, an app, whatever. The tangible output after all that hard work is incredibly rewarding. The problem is, when an outside force shits on that achievement, it can create a cognitive dissonance that can be counterproductive.

You know what an outside force can’t take away? Your process. Learning to throw yourself into the moment, to put in the hard time, to expend the energy, to struggle and to enjoy it, is a surefire way to reset your priorities. The next step is to understand that rejection is a necessary part of your process. Once you establish that expectation, it becomes a symbol of progress, rather than a setback.

3. Remind yourself it’s all subjective

When you put your work out into the world, it’s not yours anymore. Not yours alone, at least. Everyone's tastes vary, and you can expect people to see things differently than you. That's part of the messy beauty of creativity. It is an intensely individual process by which we form our thoughts and feelings about a creative piece of work.

I’ve gotten such a kick out of the reactions to my new movie, There’s Something Wrong With the Children—for every “This movie is ??” tweet, there’s one that says it’s the dumbest thing ever. One reviewer was deeply offended by the portrayal of mental illness. Others have applauded the same. The only thing you can predict is that you can’t predict how people will react to your work.

(Incidentally, as I post this, it’s ranked #3 in Horror on iTunes behind MEGAN and THE MENU. And in the top 20 of ALL movies. Which puts the proof to one of my drumbeats in Advertising: It’s better to be polarizing and noticed than to be universally ignored.)

4. Equate rejection with progress

As Michael Scott famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take - Wayne Gretzky.”

Michael knew that Gretzky knew that taking more shots meant getting more rejections. And that changed the meaning of being rejected. You’re making more work. You’re getting more of your work out into the world. This is a real marker of progress. The more of your ideas, your drawings, your stories you have out there, the better your chances of reaching your goals.

This is the Stephen King approach. Nail not heavy enough to hold all those rejections? Get a spike. Think about how many rejections that meant he received. And how each one told him he was that much closer to his goal.

5. Reward yourself

Caveat: I haven’t tried this. It may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever written. What are you gonna do about it? Reject me?

Positive reinforcement is a crucial step in forming new habits or breaking bad ones. That’s because little rewards provide a jolt of dopamine, which in turn motivates us to do the right thing. So what would happen if every time you got a rejection, you gave yourself a small treat? Maybe we could trick our brains into getting a dopamine hit when that rejection comes in. Maybe we’d start to associate rejection with reward. Maybe it would be kind of fun.

Maybe the next rejection I get I’m going to order some key lime pie.

6. Exert yourself

Or, instead of eating lard the next time you get rejected, what if you dropped whatever you were doing and exercised? We all know that physical activity can increase the production of endorphins in your brain. There’s little that working up a good sweat can’t counteract.

If I followed my own advice, I’d be buff as hell.

7. Learn from it

Depending on your particular creative pursuit, rejection may come along with feedback. You don't have to take it, but you should definitely absorb it. Better yet, gather more input and see how everything gels. Look for the consistencies, the patterns, the overlaps. There’s usually some truth in those, truth that you can put to good use. If the feedback is all over the map, refer to number 3 above and move on.

8. Remember it’s not you.

While the best creative work is often inextricably linked with the human who creates it, that does not make them equal to one another. You are not your work. Your work is not you.

Taking rejection personally is human. It can also be disastrous, if you let it keep you from doing what you love. Don't let it.

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I hope something above resonates with you and seems like it might be worth trying. I myself may take a slice of key lime pie for a jog.

Do you have any suggestions for dealing with rejection? Share them in a comment below, or share this article with someone who might be dealing with an infection of rejections.