Living: the ultimate team sport

Rejection is a passing fantasy

Posted on March 17, 2015 Updated on March 19, 2015

Have you ever been rejected? Read the attached NY Times article: Accepted? Rejected? Relax You’ll see that the article was retitled since it first appeared so when you click on the link, you’ll see the subject matter as being about college admissions.

Rejection affects all of us: it’s not just about college admission policies.

I’m a writer; I should know.

I’ve only been looking for an agent for 30 days, therefore the 15 rejections – or what I like to call not interesteds – I’ve received out of 60 submissions sent is only 25% of the total so far.  Wow, 75% of the agents haven’t turned me down yet!

As indicated in a re-blogged post by Laura Lee Anderson, Query letter: Your Book’s Audition, trying to get published is serious business.  I’ve proven the seriousness of that business, as well as the effects on my psyche, with the honesty I shamelessly reveal in all my posts relating to my writing journey, including I write because I have to.

But guess what folks?  An agent’s decision about my future doesn’t change who I am.  As a matter of fact, along with the momentary self-doubt I experience after each rejection comes the determination to try even harder.  I take my writing seriously, even if some agents aren’t on the same page as me, so to speak.

In the New York Times article I posted at the beginning of this article, one of the young ladies who was rejected by her first-choice college and went on to succeed at a different college and at other very challenging endeavors said the following:

Rejection was fleeting – and survivable … I never would have had the strength, drive, or fearlessness to take such a risk if I hadn’t been rejected so intensely before.”

Writers everywhere who have been rejected intensely over the course of their career, take comfort in the rejections of others.  It’s just a passing fantasy, a brief interlude in what will be the remainder of your fabulously fulfilling life.