3 Things I am doing, so I can deal with rejection better

Hello, my fellow rejection fearing writers,

Rejection is horrible, that is just a fact. You know. I know. You Nan knows. No one enjoys being rejected, no matter what it is. If it’s something you wanted (sometimes even if you didn’t want it and you’re relived you didn’t get it…it’s honestly an odd one) it hurts when they say no. And it’s unavoidable. We all have to go through some type of rejection, doesn’t matter what it is.

Now, if you’re an idiot like me, you decided on a creative thing. Which means rejections come every five minutes, causing you to spiral, cry and doom-scowling until 3 am looking up whether to abandon your dreams.

No? Just me? Okay then.

Well anyway, creative work and rejection are super-glued together. Writers, actors’ musicians. Pretty sure we hear people saying no, more than our names. So, since I take rejection badly in a self-doubt, impostor syndrome kind of way. I’m trying these three things to help me deal with it. I don’t know if these are going to work long time, or if they will work for anyone else.

But this is my blog and there is latterly a warning on the homepage that I am over sharing here so. (also, it’s like some of my friends and my sister reading this at this point so…yea)

1. Have that Pity Party

We established, however unnecessarily so, that rejection sucks. So, it’s okay to indulge in sadness. Feel thoughts, feelings, listen to sad music and cry if you need to. I have found that yea, keeping it in is not helping me. Shocker.

So, I have let myself be sad, but with some rules. - Pity Party can’t last more than a day -Don’t open an email from the magazine/journal/competition before or during an activity. -Enjoy the things you had planned. You don’t need to know there and then, nor do you want to feel like that you're ruining anyone else’s day.

Again, this is something I’m trying to do for myself. You can try. It seems to work for me. There might come a time where I don’t need a pity party and it will roll off my back we’ll see.

2. Bin those rejection letters

Now I had a lecture, who told us to keep our rejection letter (emails), print them out, laminate them and use them as inspiration.

I would respectfully like to disagree and point out that this is not a solution that fits all sizes. This is coming from someone who did this for at least two years after he said it. Didn’t lament or print them out inks expensive, but I kept them in a folder on my laptop to look at. It made me feel worse about myself and caused some of the doom scrolling.

Now this may work for you. It works for some people know but it doesn’t work for me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m just a negative person by nature or for another reason. It just doesn’t gel with me, so I do this now instead: Read, Copy, Bin, Save, Edit.

So, I will read the rejection, if there is no feedback, okay bin. If there is copy paste on a separate page of the submitted work, bin the original letter. In a case of a rejection letter where they say they can give you feedback for payment.

Personally, I have come across this mostly in a magazine you have to have a subscription for to submit work to or even competitions you need to pay to enter. So that’s a no for me. So, after binning the letter and saving the feedback. Ill take a break and I’ll come back to edit the piece of work.

I use their feedback. Their rejection doesn't serve as a reminder, and it won't deter me from submitting to them again.

I haven’t tried to submit anything beyond my blog yet, but I’m building myself up to it again. Hopefully, with a better version of my work from before.

3. Focus on the successes you had along the way.

Now the self-doubt still comes even after the previous two points. I hate everything I write. I think it’s worthless, wondering if I’m wasting on time on something that never going to happen. And honestly, it might not.

That’s okay doesn’t mean I should stop trying, though.

So, I’ve been trying to remind myself of success I had and that someone, even if it wasn’t me though I was good enough.

Those things include: -Getting into Uni -Graduating, and not by scraping bye. -putting on two festivals with friends -My personal tutor using my short dialogue piece in his research paper (I'm the chicken kiev) -This blog, actually showing up on the google page when you look for it.

None of these things are perfect, but they are mine. I did them and I’m proud of them.

So, there we have it, the three things I’m doing to help me deal with rejection. Let me know if they work, if don’t or what you do to get over it.

Just remember to be proud of the things you have accomplished.

The Overly Anxious Writer