Whether you’re participating in the Query Challenge or not, if you’re a writer, you know rejection. Roy A. Barnes offers some excellent tips on handling an onslaught of “Nos” without losing your drive to write.
Surviving a Rejection Tsunami
by Roy A. Barnes
www.inkthinkerblog.com — During a five-week stretch in 2005, I pegged 26 rejections, including seven in one 24-hour span. In that same time frame, I garnered only one acceptance. My mentor of seven years characterized this experience as a “rejection tsunami”. During this tsunami, I must admit that I experienced feelings that alternated between depression and of being emotionally clubbed over and over.
The plot to this writing phenomenon of the worst kind took a strange twist towards the end of this rejection tsunami. My artist friend was to take someone to a benefit, but she backed out at the last minute. So he asked me to come along. This benefit just happened to be called “S.E.A. The Hope.” Granted, the event was on behalf of the victims of the natural disaster that occurred on December 26, 2004, in Southeast Asia. Still, I decided to attend, anticipating that a symbolic message of hope would be in store for me, given the timing of the event, and by what my mentor had quipped to me days earlier.
One of the speakers, a retired professor of geology, said that tsunamis come as a result of a build up of pressure in the earth. I had been submitting so many queries and completed works since the end of January (a literary build-up of pressure), that it was inevitable for me to get walloped with a litany of rejection slips and emails during such a short time frame. But just like the name of the benefit for the tsunami victims, I’ve come to the conclusion that hope exists for my writing career after my first rejection tsunami. Why? Let me tell you where I stood with my writing as of the summer of 2004:
I had never made one dime from writing, other than receiving a 12-pack of Ccca-Cola from a former co-worker as a thank-you gesture. She ditched writing an article for the company newsletter, but asked me on short notice to compose the article. Up to that time, my writing career could be summed up as letters to the editors of local papers, and writing for company newsletters, none of which generated any cash for my efforts. I half-heartedly sent out one to three travel-related or literary submissions per year, using outdated writers’ market books. I futilely hoped for an acceptance and a check from an editor with this approach.
Since 2004, a lot has changed due to a number of notable milestones.I’ve been invited to press trips.I actually attended my first one while that rejection tsunami was in force.I have received real money for my travel, writing-themed, prose, and poetry works.My writing and editing skills have improved greatly.I’m more adept at researching markets and following writer guidelines.Yes, I’ve made dumb mistakes, and let downs are still a fact of life for my writing career.Still, hope resides in me because getting all those rejections meant that I’d been generating a lot of queries and submissions.With each query and submission, my writing skills have improved.The key is to persevere and let the acceptances come as they may.
Up until the middle of June 2004, I was employed full-time by a regional airline. I made decent money and had good benefits, but I was very unfulfilled. The three to four weeks a year of vacation time were all I looked forward to. The other 48 weeks a year were spent constantly fantasizing about the four weeks of escape from a working life of utter boredom and irritation. Yet what I have found is that since I’ve gotten more serious about my writing, most days are like an adventure; and thus, I don’t find myself constantly fantasizing about faraway places.
When I told my airline boss that I was resigning, he commented to me that I wouldn’t find an easier job or place to work at.That was the problem: Doing the easy thing just isn’t fulfilling.The answer doesn’t lie in walking the path the masses trample on day after day, year after year.
When people get more serious about pursuing their dreams, they often find themselves caught between the Egyptians chasing them in one direction (the unfulfilled life of bondage) while staring at the raging Red Sea of uncertainty in the other. They can’t go back, but can only move forward and hope the waters will part. As for me, I won’t go back to the bondage of an unfulfilling career. Maybe I will never become a famous writer nor even get to the point to where I can totally sustain myself economically with my writing. But for well over two years now, I’ve been experiencing quite an odyssey because I have chosen to follow my heart like never before!
Roy A. Barnes writes from the windy plains of southeastern Wyoming. His writing-themed articles have appeared at such publications like The Fabulist Flash, The Busy Freelancer, The InkSpotter News, The Willamette Writer, and The Dabbling Mum. His travel articles have appeared at Transitions Abroad, GoNOMAD.com, Northwest Prime Time, and Live Life Travel. The Goblin Reader, Swimming Kangaroo, Skatefic.com, and Poesia have published his poetry and prose.
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Fabulous essay and exactly what I needed this morning to counter the current panic-attack.