Sept. 13, 2002
A lot of people bitch about rejection but I am one who actually finds use for it.
When my first book proposal was rejected, I didn’t weep for hours on end and fall into a heap of despair. Instead, I asked myself why was it rejected and the answer was obvious – it was crap. I took the publishers reason of rejection (there isn’t a market) and used that as a catalyst to make a better proposal. And I have.
If I query a magazine and get a rejection letter back, I ask myself why was it rejected. Was it a bad article? The wrong kind of article? A bad query? By answering these questions and examining the reasons why something didn’t work, I ultimately give myself a better chance of success next time.
A great example was I queried a magazine for a travel article. They told me they couldn’t use it at this time but liked my style and asked me to submit some more ideas – a successful rejection! If all I heard was, “NO!” then I wouldn’t now be working on a new article that will be published.
Sometimes, there’s just plain, nasty rejection where someone’s having a bad day or you remind them of their Aunt Ethel who made them eat brussle sprouts for breakfast. If my work is good and is rejected on the basis of “We just didn’t like it” I don’t take it personally – I just try to sell it somewhere else.
I’ve learned that for every no you get, you’ll receive a million yes’. Unfortunately the ‘no’ voices always come in louder than any yes. So sometimes when you’re rejected from one source, you don’t hear the acceptance from others. The key, is to remembering that not everyone has the same opinion.
Of course there will be people who will reject your work, but there will be a hell of a lot more who will accept it. You just have to find them.