Get Excited About Rejection!

 One of my favorite newsletters is called The Wordling. In today's issue, Wordling CEO an editor Natasha Khullar Relph shared her experiences in coping with rejection. She also shares some information she gathered about other writers who faced rejection: "The writer who had six books rejected by publishers until the seventh was finally published and became a New York Times bestseller. The author whose first book was a NYT bestseller, the fourth led to their publisher dropping them, and that ended up in production for a major movie. The author who had a 10-year gap between publishers." (If you want to read more about all that, click the link above to subscribe!)

 

As a writer who has been at this business for over two decades, I know the pain of rejection very well. Rejection used to bother me a lot and cause a great deal of angst.

 

These days, however, I get excited about rejection. Why on earth do I get excited about a rejection? Because...

 

Every rejection gets me one step closer to finding the RIGHT market for my work that will pay me a decent (or better!) rate.

 

Every rejection is one more "no" I can add to my collection! I am a "no collector." (Credit: Stephen Key)

 

Every rejection is an opportunity to revamp my original idea or content to submit to a different market in need of that type of content OR to completely turn that idea around into something else (a rejected short story was turned into a YA novel idea).

 

Every rejection is an opportunity to share yet another “rejection woe” story among my network of writers.

 

Every rejection is proof that I am trying.

 

So the next time you receive a rejection, shrug it off and get busy getting your pitch or submission exactly where it is meant to be or turn it into something new.