The Power of Rejection
Today, the only gatekeeper standing in the way of publishing your book, is you.
Rejection is discouraging. Repeated rejection is soul-crushing. But living a writers life, we know that rejection is part of the gig. Getting 87 rejections on my first novel, THE MEMORY BOX felt like a pummeling. And since I didn’t receive one single green light, I gleaned one thing: this book would never be published. More than that, it wasn’t worthy of being published.
I’m a problem solver by nature. I’ve never met an obstacle that didn’t challenge me to out smart it. Out muscle it. Out last it. I haven’t won them all. Far from it. Some of my problem solving alternate approaches have been disastrous. But I’ll never win what I don’t attempt. And I’ll certainly get nowhere by shrinking back.
One of the most important realizations I made after all that rejection nearly persuaded me to hang up the writers life, was that the people rejecting me were strangers. We’d never met, they didn’t know me. They didn’t know what I was capable of, or my backstory, or what I’d achieved thus far in my life after setbacks and through grit and tenacity and clever problem solving and, okay, I’ll say it, through not giving up. But I did. I knew me. Yet during those months and years of rejection and starting to feel insecure and newly doubtful of my abilities, I was ready to hand over power to these strangers. I was willing to let these strangers decide my future as a writer. Right? Isn’t that what I was doing? If I stopped writing books because of the rejection of strangers, I was allowing their disinterest in my work to shut me down. That’s a lot of power to give a bunch of people who I never met and never met me. People I’d likely never communicate with again.
Is that sounding a bit nuts to you, too?
These people didn’t even think about me. Many of them didn’t even read the query letter. Or the accompanying pages. They sent a form rejection letter, if I was lucky. Many didn’t even reply. The rejection was silent and invisible.
While all that rejection came close to shutting me (and my dream of being an author) down, I pursued a quest to understand the publishing industry, both the traditional publishing industry and the self-publishing industry, and repurposed the rejection into something much more powerful. That power fueled me to sell over 200K copies of my debut book and to my amazement, it hit the NYTimes and USA Today bestseller lists and beyond.
My point is, you know you. You know what you’re made of. You also know that quite often rejection has nothing to do with you or your work. It has to do with an agent’s or editor’s own agenda. Lots and lots of factors go into the projects they chose that have nothing to do with yours.
If you’re an author who’s experiencing rejection on any level (aren’t we all?), whether you're querying, on sub, or trying to keep yourself enthusiastic about your project or need advice on what to do next, join me for my newest virtual workshop this Wednesday, June 18th at 8pm ET during which I’ll talk about living with rejection and thriving in the face of it. I’ll share:
Ways to turn rejection into motivation so it doesn’t end your dreams of being an author but instead, fuels your ambition
Personal anecdotes of my querying nightmare and what finally turned it around, including the mistakes I made so you don’t repeat them
Firsthand knowledge of the industry today
AND MOST IMPORTANT . . .
My TOP 10 TIPS on how to INCREASE the ODDS of PUBLISHING SUCCESS
Register for this virtual workshop, June 18 at 8pm here: https://thebookdoctors.com/calendar/ . Recording will be available.