LET’S REJECT REJECTIONS

Your query to an agent has been rejected. Your short story was rejected by a magazine. You are a potato and are starting to show roots so the chef rejected you.

Aside from the potato thing, this happens so often to literally every writer, how does this not make us all feel like rejects?

And no one should feel like a reject.

But then, no agent can represent all the authors. No publisher can publish all the books. That means we have to figure out how to deal with rejection. The good news is that’s super easy. All you have to do is develop a thick skin. I heard skin thickening is offered by a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps for as little as €400,000 per treatment. It requires only one treatment per rejection letter, so most trillionaire authors should be able to soak that up. The rest of us will have to remain entirely human.

And no human wants to be, likes to be, feels they should be or deserve to be, rejected.

But then there’s that reality again: No agent can represent all the authors. No publisher can publish all the books.

We have to figure out not how to render ourselves immune to normal, healthy human emotional responses, but to, for lack of a better term, roll with it.

Three years ago I wrote a post here called “Write Short Stories, Get Rejected,” in which I made the case that if we get some lower-than-novel-stakes work out there, get the sensation of the rejection email worked into our expectations, that can help soften the blow of the novel rejection. I stand by that post, which itself refers back to a post entitled “Your Pile of Failures,” in which one might begin to see a theme developing over the past seven years here at Fantasy Author’s Handbook.

Rejection is a reality of the business of publishing. And as with other realities, there’s really nothing we can do about it. But as with other realities, what we can at least try to do is take control of our reactions to those sometimes unpleasant realities. But how do we lessen the impact of the rejection of a novel we might have invested years of time and effort, and even thousands of dollars of editing and writing courses, to bring to completion?

Rejection in any form or context can get you thinking, like other forms of negative feedback, that there’s something wrong with you and not your writing, not this one particular manuscript, but you, yourself, as a human. Rejections can nibble away at, or even take big bites out of your sense of self-worth and self-confidence, which tend to be in short supply for most creative people in the first place. This can then push you into building a set of barriers between yourself and the world, or at least between yourself and the easy to see as mean-spirited, even hateful publishing industry. This is what I think of when I hear authors brag of their “thick skins,” which doesn’t feel healthy to me. This is also the single reason behind the wildly inaccurate views of the publishing business that pervades author communities on social media.

The truth is the publishing business—at least the agents and editors you’ll need to attract to get your book published—love books, love authors, and are always looking for the next big thing, the next trend, the next breakout author. They want you. The cold splash of reality is there are lots of you.

So then the first thing you can do is recognize that when your “dream agent” says no, that agent isn’t saying no to you, the agent is saying no to your book.

I know it’s dreadfully difficult to make that distinction. If you’re writing well it means you’ve put a lot of yourself into that book. It’s right to feel as though it’s a part of you. But the reality is it’s a part of you you’re trying to sell.

I went over the idea of the querying author as a salesman in “Submit & Query Like a Salesman,” so won’t belabor that point except to say: Your book might be a part of you, but it’s also a commodity. It’s a thing you made that you’re now trying to sell. During the querying process, work to change your thinking—temporarily—from, “This is me you’re saying no to,” to “oh, you’re passing on this amazing deal? Your loss.”

That might feel as impossible as growing a thick skin, but what we’re looking for here is a temporary, situational change in thinking. This novel has been a part of me, and it will be again, once I make this sale.

I know that’s hard, but it’s worth a try.

Failing that—or in addition to that—when that rejection comes in, take a moment with it. Leave your skin at human thickness and give yourself a moment to grieve. Feel the hurt, recognize it, then remind yourself that this is one no and all you need is one yes. Does that rejection make you feel like quitting? I get it, but what if the next query is the one yes? You’ll have given up one query before the miracle—and you’ll never even know it.

A rejection can be an opportunity, too. Do you want to go over your query letter and/or sample excerpt one more time? If you’re seriously unsure of something, go ahead and do that. If you’re sure you’re fine but a rejection is making you think maybe you aren’t, recognize that and go ahead and send the query as is to your next potential customer. After all, the rejection email you just got has a nearly 100% chance of being a template that agent’s assistant sends to the overwhelming majority of submissions, many of which (way, way, more than you might imagine) were not read at all.

Let that sink in.

Your query may have been rejected out of hand, with no judgment on any part of it, let alone on you as a person.

And you will have no way of knowing if that’s the case.

If the rejection says the agent, “didn’t connect with the writing,” recognize that that’s meaningless. That’s a stock rejection line. It’s politely unprovable. For some reason, there just isn’t a level of honesty in the business that allows for a rejection that reads: “No one even read this. I’m the agent’s assistant and was told to clear out the rest of the slush pile…” even though it happens lots more often than you think. Though that bit of honesty might make you feel better, don’t expect to read it.

But how about this: By the powers vested in me by no one and nothing, I hereby grant you permission to imagine that is the case behind every “I didn’t connect with…” rejection.

Translate those things in your head and you may find the grieving process goes by faster and less traumatically. And this isn’t “fooling yourself.” It’s actually the most likely explanation.

Then, no matter what, send the next query. And the next one, and the next one.

Agents decide which authors to represent. Acquiring editors decide which books to publish. Authors decide when or if to give up.

If you really want to do this, recognize the business side of it is dominated by rejection, and keep doing it anyway.

That’s the writing life.

—Philip Athans

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