This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 40: How To Deal With Rejection.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And I feel like it has been 100 years since I last podcasted. This is weird, weird but good. It’s currently the month of April 2016, and April for me was just, it was a month, a month full of things and obligations and speaking gigs and travel and everything, absolutely everything. So I am glad to be back in my little office, which doubles as my podcasting studio, with my two cats clawing at the door outside, wanting to be let in so they can knock everything over and destroy my recording, and with motorcycles and trucks going up and down the hill upon which I live, very vigorously revving their motors incessantly, and with great relish and delight.

I’m glad to be back. I’m glad that you are tuning in and listening to episode 40 here with me, which is about rejection. And maybe at this point, you’re saying something like, “You know Sarah, your podcast is supposed to be uplifting. It’s supposed to be inspiring. Rejection is not inspiring.” And you are correct. Rejection hurts and makes us feel terrible and unwanted, and dare I say rejected, but it’s something that every writer goes through. It’s something that every human being alive goes through unless you lead a specially charmed life. This is maybe not the episode for you, but for those of us who deal with rejection, maybe on a daily, monthly, weekly, yearly, whatever, hourly basis, I hope that this podcast episode will provide you with some good information on dealing with rejection and how others have dealt with rejection, and what rejection really means about us and about our writing.

So what is rejection? And what does it mean for a writer to be rejected? I feel like I’m kind of doing one of those Websters defines rejection as dot, dot, dot, but I’m not. I’m not even going to look up the word rejection. I’m just going to tell you that it is somebody telling you no, and it might have absolutely nothing to do with what you’ve written. For the most part, unless the person that you’ve submitted your writing to is following a rigorous and standardized checklist, most of the time, rejection and approval or acceptance for that matter is subjective. That means that it is up to the person’s feelings and opinions. And there’s no real underlying guidelines to tell you whether you’re doing something objectively right or wrong. And because of its largely subjective nature, rejection is something that we wrestle with because it’s not clearly right or wrong.

So I’m going to give you a real life example of something that actually just happened to me. So the month of April, I just mentioned was very busy and I gave three talks in three weeks, which if you’re a seasoned speaker, that might be the norm for you. But for me, it was a little aggressive. I went up to the third talk, which was in Minneapolis, just oh my gosh, it was two days ago. I’m still in this weird, post-conference speaking haze of weirdness. So please forgive me if I can’t remember where I am and who I am and all those lovely things. I gave my talk and it went really, really well. The room was packed. It was standing room only. I was feeling a good energy off the crowd. If you’ve spoken before, you know that that is sort of what makes or breaks a talk. It’s the energy. It’s what the crowd is giving back to you as you’re speaking to them.

And afterwards, a couple of folks came up and shook my hand and said, I did a great job. And I beamed. And I said, “Thank you so much. It means the world to me. Thank you.” I was so grateful for those kinds of people who said kind things, but our brains, for whatever reason, have this, I don’t know if it’s a need or a desire or just an inclination to ignore the 99 good things that are said about us or about our work and to focus almost obsessively so on the one bad thing that is said to us or about us or about our work. So after I gave my talk, which was about honesty and marketing, which is just one of my absolute favorite topics, and I get really fired up about it.

I love talking about truth and honesty and just all of the magic that happens there. There’s a motorcycle. Can you hear it? Oh yeah, that’s a loud one. It’s like a little moped. Anyway, so after my talk, I was just feeling really good about myself. And I was kind of on this high of having accomplished something or gotten something over with that I had been not necessarily dreading, but it had been a stressor in my life. I was like, yay, that was the end of my three talks in three weeks. And now I can go back to my weird little house on my weird little hill and be a weird little hermit with my weird little cats and whatever else it is I surrounded myself with. And so I was writing this high and if you’ve ever been to a conference or spoken at a conference, sometimes Twitter just explodes with the hashtag for the conference and people tweeting quotes from what the speaker said.

And then I get to one tweet. It’s not directed at me, but it’s tagged with the conference hashtag. And even though it’s a vague tweet and it’s not directed at me or tagging me in any way, I still know it was from my talk because the timestamp was from my talk. It was quoting something I had said directly and something that I remember saying. And part of, I mean, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know I like to balance a little bit of silliness with hopefully a lot of compassion and inspiration. And so when I speak in public, it’s the same way. I speak about kindness and truth and honesty, and I try to be inspiring, but I also make a couple jokes here and there. And there is one person in my industry who has a reputation for wearing very off the wall clothing and having some just off the wall, facial hair going on and I respect him more than I respect most of the industry publications I follow. He is brilliant.

And when I tease, I tease in love. I really do. I really try to never say an unkind word or uncompassionate word. I mean it’s not in me. It’s not in my DNA to do that. I don’t believe in tearing people down. I know it hurts, but I made a little joke about this person’s facial hair and it’s very silly. And this person tweeted and said, “Hmm, I thought you were kind and compassionate. I’m not feeling the kindness right now.” I’m like, okay, that’s one person’s opinion. It wasn’t even really particularly hurtful. But one of the people who worked for the conference saw this tweet and responded, “We take our code of conduct very seriously at this conference. And if somebody is violating it, I need to know.”

And with that tweet suddenly I was, he “problem”. My heart sank to the floor. It hurt. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I try so hard to follow the rules and to be a good person. And the people who ran the conference were asking if they should track me down. And I don’t even know what the penalty for breaking the code of conduct would be, but I just knew that someone was going to arrest me or send a SWAT team after me. I felt so awful. And then my heart fell even further because the person who tweeted this then responded, “Yeah”, agreeing that I had broken the code of conduct. And the code of conduct was all about creating an inclusive atmosphere and being compassionate. And it’s everything that I’ve centered my life around being.

And so the conference went on for the rest of the day. And then there was a little networking after party. And then I had a four hour drive back home. And so that was probably about a seven or eight hour span. The only thing I could think about during that seven or eight hour span was what does this person who tweeted this thing about my talk that I had been so proud of? What does this say about my character? What does this say about me? Was I wrong to make that joke? Was I breaking the code of conduct? Do I deserve to be reprimanded or kicked out? I didn’t think so. Several of the other presenters dropped F-bombs during their presentations, but I was the one who was being reported.

So I spent the majority of Monday thinking about this tweet and this situation. And then I spent the majority of Tuesday going over it again and again, and I’m sorry, this is turning into a really long-winded story. But how do we know? Sometimes when we’re set against subjective measures, how do we know if it’s right, whether our work was accepted or rejected. I’m still going back and forth between this person who tweeted this thing was just way over sensitive and way out of line. This person can’t take a harmless non-malicious joke. But then I balanced that against the thought that maybe I’m not as kind and compassionate and inclusive as I like to think. Maybe I do stereotype and say cruel things. And that’s really the most difficult part about all of this. It’s taking a look at yourself and trying to be objective about yourself and the light of someone else’s subjective criticism or response.

So let’s talk about you. You’re a writer. You are a writer, as I say so many times. You’ve written things, whether you’re new to writing or whether you’ve been writing for 60 years. Not everything that you’ve written is incredible or perfect or amazing. I have written many things that are not good because we learn by doing, and that’s good and that’s okay. And we should do that. There’s just a little bit of discernment that needs to happen when we send something off for publication. We want it to be good. We want it to be dare I say, sellable, consumable, readable. So today I’m going to talk about three different types of rejection and how to deal with these and how to feel about them, not that I’m going to tell you how to feel, but we’ll talk about the feelings that these types of rejections sort of stir up within us.

I also want to give credit where credit is due. I am a huge fan of writer, Chuck Wendig, who wrote the latest Star Wars novel Aftermath. And you know me, I’m huge science fiction junkie. I love scifi. He’s also written some delightfully, not tasteful, sort of speculative fiction and horror books as well, but he has a blog called terribleminds.com and it is full of foul language. So if that turns you off, please do not visit it. But for those of you who don’t mind the language, he has a really great blog post about rejection, and it focuses on 25 things that our writers should know about rejection. And I’ll link to this post in today’s show notes, so you can read it as well for yourself. And again, the show notes will be sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R dot com. And this is Episode 40: How to Deal with Rejection.

In his blog post Chuck Wendig goes through the three different types of rejection, which is where I’m getting these to talk about today. He also talks about a lot of other great stuff, like how to sort of read the patterns if you get multiple rejections, reading the patterns within those and using that to learn and to help yourself grow, but read that post. I’m not going into the patterns today. I’m going to talk about just our gut reactions to how we feel and how we deal with those feelings and those rejections. So like I said in the very beginning of this episode, every single writer deals with rejection, every single one. There’s even a website that’s devoted to calling out and telling the stories of now famous works that were initially rejected tens of times, hundreds of times. The website is called litrejections.com. That’s L-I-T R-E-J-E-C-T-I-O-N-S dot com.

And it’s pretty delightful. There’s several stories on there. For instance, Ray Bradbury, again, one of my favorites. He received over 800 rejections before he sold his first story. Just imagine that. Another one of my favorite books, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. And I never know if I’m saying her last name correctly, so bear with me on that. But that book was rejected 26 times. Another really famous example is Stephen King. If you’ve read his book on writing, he talks about this a little bit there, but his first novel Carrie was rejected 30 or so times before it got published. And he actually threw the manuscript away and his wife dug it out of the trash and told him to keep submitting it.

Stephen King is also famous for reportedly sticking a large nail into the wall. And every time he got a rejection letter, he would impale the rejection letter on that nail in his office. And he would just watch the pile grow. Different people deal with rejection in different ways, but the successful people, the ones who do eventually get published, they don’t give up. They don’t stop trying. Now I’m saying this to you because I know that rejection can be incredibly disheartening. Without going into my long and storied personal history, I’ve been dumped a lot in romantic relationships. And maybe you have too, and I’ve faced rejection countless times in asking people out on dates. Maybe you’ve lost a job before. Maybe you’ve had someone tell you that they don’t want to be your friend anymore, or that you’re worthless.

There’s so many things that can make us feel rejected. Even when someone says that they’re disappointed in you for something that you’ve done or failed to do, it really hurts. And there can be a couple of reasons for this. First of all, if you’re like me, you tend to be a people pleaser. And so I do a lot of things because I know it will make people happy, or it will make me feel like I’m more worthwhile, or that I am loved. And if you’re a people pleaser and you are rejected, oh, it hurts, because you failed to do the one thing that you intended to do. Rejection also hurts because especially if you’re a writer, our writing is so personal, whether you’re writing a memoir, a science fiction story, a horror story, a children’s book, whatever it is you’re writing. There’s a piece of you within that. And sometimes it feels like when that piece of writing is rejected, we are rejected. A piece us is dismissed or tossed away.

But you know what? I’m here to tell you two things. A, I know what it feels like, and I can sympathize and empathize. And number two, it’s going to be okay. In his blog post, Chuck Wendig talks about good rejection, worthless rejection and mean rejection. We’re going to talk about good rejection first, because I think that this is something that can actually help us. This is something that seems bad on the outside, but really can be a force of good. It can be a much needed change agent in our writing. And you’re asking, “Sarah, how can rejection be good?” It can mean being turned down by somebody in a romantic relationship that you later realized would have been a really awful idea. It might mean being turned down or let go from a job that was just not the right fit for you.

And in writing, this is when you maybe get this sort of rejection that offers constructive criticism. These sort of rejections often are trying to be helpful. And I know it’s really easy to feel hurt and resentful when you’re rejected. But I also urge you to look for the value in these types of rejections. When you get the type of rejection that says, “Hey, this was great. I just really want to see you clean up this character. Or I really want to see you do this with your language.” Take that advice to heart. At the end of the day, this type of rejection may very well strengthen you as a writer. It’s kind of like when you go out to exercise, if you exercise, but it’s like when you go out to exercise and you’re running or you’re lifting weights, and as you’re doing that, it’s making little minuscule tears in your muscles, but that’s what makes your muscles stronger.

In his blog post, Chuck Wendig says, “You can’t change market forces, but you can change the quality of your work.” And if the type of rejection or criticism that you’re receiving is good rejection, it will try to nudge you in healthy and good ways, ways in which you can grow as a writer. It’s just sort of difficult to balance that against the fact that it is a rejection and it hurts. Just please know, it’s never personal. It feels that way, but the person who read your work doesn’t know the whole you. They just realized that maybe this thing that you wrote was not a good fit for their audience or their market, or even just the time and the place. It’s not a commentary on who you are or what type of person you are. They don’t know you. All they know is the small piece of writing that you submitted and your self-worth is not entirely tied up in that.

The second type of rejection is sort of in the middle, and this is worthless rejection. This is when you get an email that says, “Yeah nope, sorry.” And it doesn’t really tell you why you were rejected or how you can improve your writing. It’s just kind of a rejection. If and when you receive one of these, read it over, make sure that it’s not a good rejection in disguise. Remind yourself that this entire process is subjective, and what wasn’t a great fit for one publisher might be a great fit for another publisher. And keep going. Think about Ray Bradbury and his 800 rejections. Think about Stephen King and the nail in his wall that had all of his rejection slips. Think about all those writers. Every published writer has a drawer in their desk where there is a manuscript or two manuscripts or 10 manuscripts, that even after they’ve been published, nobody wants to publish.

Not everything we write is gold, and that’s okay. What I say to that is, “Welcome to the club, every writer faces rejection.” Going back to the talk that I gave in Minneapolis on Monday, one of the examples that I give is a marketing example. And it’s about being what Doug Kessler calls insanely honest in your marketing copy. And what he says essentially is that everyone comes to your work with a different mindset and different wants and different needs. And you’re just not going to satisfy everyone. And I know that’s a really rote thing to say, and it’s really hard to believe that anyone wouldn’t like our work, but even think about very, very successful brands. Think about Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is a wildly successful brand. But think about all of the people who like Pepsi better or who don’t drink soda or who hate corn syrup. Not everyone has to love you or love your work in order for you to be happy and successful.

Finally, I want to talk about mean rejection. These are the trolls and the haters and the people who say mean things because they can, or because they’re angry at something that’s usually not you. They’re usually angry at themselves or angry at something far away from you, but they take their anger out on you. These are the trolls. These are the people who live in the YouTube comments. These are the people who leave one star Amazon reviews and send you messages filled with hateful things and just make you feel awful in general. The internet is a place where so many people can still remain anonymous. And it’s easy to say hurtful things when you’re anonymous. It’s the ultimate talking about someone behind their back, except they’re listening. They’re reading your comments.

I went to a really wonderful conference about being an influential person a couple of months ago. And one of the speakers really struck me with something that she said not, not literally, but one of her points really resonated with me. And she talked about receiving rejection and criticism in her role, in her professional life. And she said, one of the things that surprised her most was how mean some people could be. But then she talked about learning to develop a thick skin. And I know it’s hard to do because I know that there’s some kind of really sick fascination or some really sick attraction to feeling like a victim and to reveling in a victimhood, because it means that you’re not responsible for making your own situation better. But you are. We live in a world where you have to make your own happiness. And sometimes that means rejecting the badness that people throw your way. And this speaker talked about envisioning bad comments and mean things and slurs that people throw at you as if they were rocks.

Sometimes they hit you and it hurts. Sometimes it narrowly misses you and you just feel astonished and hurt that someone could even think about throwing something so negative at you. But at the end of the day, all of these rocks that have been thrown at you and cast at your feet, what are you going to do with them? Are you going to pick them up and carry them around? Because that’s going to become a very heavy burden. And I know it’s, but there’s a choice that you can make. That choice is to pick up the rocks and carry them around and to feel their weight and their sharp edges, and to consciously keep them with you wherever you go. Or you can simply not pick them up in the first place. You can acknowledge the rocks have been thrown at you and you can choose not to bend down and pick them up off the ground.

One side of this choice will leave you feeling bitter and resentful and angry and hurt. The other choice will leave you unburdened by the subjective thoughts of others and free to move on. You know, maybe at the end of the day, Taylor Swift really said it best. Sometimes, haters going to hate. Your role in this is to just step over the rocks that people have thrown at you and lift your chin up high. Take the high road. I know that whoever said sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me, was very, very wrong. Oftentimes it’s words that hurt us the most, but to a certain degree, you can choose how you respond to that hurt, whether you pick up those figurative rocks and carry them around and let them burden and scrape you, or whether you acknowledge them and leave them right there on the ground where they belong.

Not everyone loves Coca-Cola, and not everyone is going to love what you write. You’re going to face rejection, but that’s okay. You are a writer. And that is one of the things that makes us tougher and stronger. Every single rejection you get is a battle scar that makes you look tougher and meaner and more awesome. So ignore and dismiss the mean rejection. Don’t feed the trolls. Let them be mean and miserable. You’re above that. For worthless rejection, shake it off. They don’t know you. It’s not a reflection of your moral character or of who you are. Keep trying. Remember that your writing is not the perfect fit for everyone. Finally, I urge you to learn from good rejection. Unlike our little league baseball teams, we’re not going to get a participation award for every single thing we do, but you don’t learn anything from getting a participation award.

You learn lessons from losing or from receiving a rejection letter that says, “Hey, you really need to work on this.” Or “Hey, if you fix this up and resubmit it next year, we might take it.” Embrace this helpful criticism. It’s just going to make you better and stronger than before. Now, I didn’t cover absolutely every single thing that has to do with rejection. Sometimes you’re going to get rejected because of things outside of your control or because of established unfairness within the world of publishing. And I’m so sorry about that. I don’t want that to happen to you, but it might, in which case I want to remind you, keep going. There are two things you can do if you find you’re being rejected more than you should, or if you just want to be rejected maybe a little bit less, if you want to set yourself up to not be rejected as much.

One of these is to self publish your work. And I feel like that’s a whole episode in and of itself. And so I won’t go into the pros and cons and how tos of self publishing right now, but it is certainly an option and it’s easier than ever. Secondly, this is a place where a trusted reader or a reading group or a writing mentor, or even a group of fellow writers, whatever, other people can read your writing and let you know if the rejections that you’re getting are off kilter, or if there is some improvement that your work can use. We all have room to learn and grow, even if you are a great and experienced writer. The thing about writing is you’ll never stop getting better unless you stop writing. There’s always room for improvement. And so join a writer’s group or a writer’s circle. Find a writing mentor, find readers for your work who are willing to give you constructive criticism and really go into it with an open mind and the determination to learn and get better and to get stronger. And finally, if it helps, visit litrejections.com and remind yourself that even some of the very greatest writers started with a pile of rejection letters.

This week, I don’t have a Book of the Week for you because I have been doing two things. And one of those things is A, reading books for work, which I am not particularly inclined to review here because they are technical and/or dull and/or not really applicable to writing as the sort of art form that I like to talk about it in. And the other thing is I’ve been too busy to enjoy reading. Well, I’ve been too busy to read, not too busy to enjoy it, but I have been unable to enjoy it because I don’t have time to read, which is depressing and terrible. And boy, do I love reading. It’s just a great way to center myself. And I think that it’s one of the key reasons why I’ve been just really, really falling apart lately.

So yes, technically for like the fifth week in a row, I am technically still reading Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. And it continues to be delightful if/when I get a chance to read, which has not been very often lately, but now that April is almost over, I think that I should be having some time again to read, maybe to write, to do what I love. I hope you have time to read. Reading is so important. It’s how most writers become better other than constructive criticism and rejection. You can learn so much about writing by reading. In fact, I have a podcast episode about it. I think it’s number 18. I could be wrong. I’ll link to it in the show notes for today’s episode.

If this is something that you’re willing to talk about, I would love to hear how you deal with rejection or how you think you might deal with rejection. You can send me an email letting me know hello@sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R dot com by navigating to my website to the contact page and filling out the little form there. Or you can leave a comment at the bottom of the show notes for today’s episode, episode 40. I would love to get a broader perspective about how different writers deal with/cope with/ react to rejection.

I think at the end of the day, being a writer is a lot more difficult than most people give it credit for. They don’t understand that it’s hard work, that it’s frustrating and that we face so much rejection. And so I just wanted to say I am so proud of you in like a non patronizing way. I’m so proud of you for sticking to it and doing what you love. And if you’ve been on a break lately, that’s okay. There’s always time to get back into writing.

I really want to thank you today for listening to the Write Now podcast. I know that it takes 30, 40 minutes out of your day to listen, but I really truly do appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. I also want to say thanks specifically to the people who support me on Patreon. This includes official cool cat Sean Locke, official bookworms Matt Paulson and Rebecca Werner, official rad dude, Andrew Coons, and just so many more lovely and wonderful people. If you would like to become an official Patreon supporter, you can do so. Just head out to patreon.com. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com. And there you pledge a certain amount, whether it’s 50 cents or $1 million per episode, for every episode of the Write Now podcast that I create. So if you’re interested in doing that, I would be deeply grateful.

If you would like a less financially demanding way to support the Write Now podcast, I encourage you to subscribe. You can do this through iTunes or any other podcasting app you prefer to use. Just hit the Subscribe button. And that really helps an uptick in my numbers. You can also leave me a review, written or starred in iTunes or any of the other pod catching apps. Finally, a great way to share the Write Now podcast is to tell your friends about it. If you have a writer friend or a family member who loves to write, let them know about this podcast. If you think it would be helpful and encouraging to them, I would love to have you share it. So thank you for listening. Thank you for being awesome.

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot to ask you to be sure to sign up for my email mailing list if you haven’t done so already. This is my way of communicating with you. Well, not in podcast form, you can sign up for my newsletter kind of anywhere. I think there’s a place you can do it on my Facebook page. You can do it on sarahwerner.com. There’s a top bar that you can fill in with your email address. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom, there’s this little pop-up that says I like you, and you can type your email address there. And finally, there is a place to sign up for my mailing list on my contact page. And so any of those avenues will help you sign up for the mailing list.

It’s been awhile. I’m trying to remember. I maybe shouldn’t do this, but I do most of my podcasting, just talking into my little tube of audio foam here with no notes or anything. And so I’m trying to remember if there’s anything else that I usually end with. I don’t think there is other than this. And with that, this has been the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m Sarah Werner, and I’ve been rejected before and I’m stronger for it. And you know what? You’re going to be stronger for it too. So keep writing, don’t give up, you’re going to do something amazing.