Searchlights & Signal Flares
How Do You Deal With Rejection?
December 2002
This month: Arlene Mandell, Christine Walker, Mary Gaffney, Elizabeth Hannon,
Kevin Grossman, Ken Rodgers, Jordan Rosenfeld, Ariel Smart,
Joe Kelley, Rodney Merrill, Betty Winslow, Susan Bono
"Sorry,
we can't use your work. We're too busy to write to
you personally, but we urge you to subscribe to our journal,
Crazy as a Fox, for only $29.95 a year."
This smudgy photocopied dismissal, barely two inches wide,
comes to me regularly in one of my stamped, self-addressed
envelopes.
Does it sound familiar? Are you crushed when you receive similar
missives from heartless editors who, you suspect, are terrible
writers themselves and enjoy sending out thousands of smudgy
strips? Please don't be sad. I've shared your
pain countless times but I've also had more than 175 poems,
short stories and essays published in the past 13 years.
One could say I'm a grizzled veteran of both acceptance
and rejection.
There
are so many reasons your essay, "Me and My Toes,"
may not have made the cut: The editor enjoys getting
submissions from all over the globe but primarily publishes
works by his friends in a small Montana town. The publication has room for six stories and has received 1,231 entries. They
only want poems about horses. They never use poems
about horses since the publisher's
mother was kicked by one. Therefore, you shouldn't
automatically feel "rejected" as in: your writing
is no good.
On
the other hand, you might reread your small masterpiece
before following the classic writing magazine advice to
immediately mail it out again. For example, is "Late
August," your lyric poem about a white butterfly dipping
into golden pollen, the right choice for the winter issue
of San Francisco literary zine that likes "edgy, counter
culture rants"? Hmmm.
Perhaps "Squirrel," your prose poem that compares
a promiscuous former husband to a flea-bitten rodent might
be more suitable.
"Squirrel"
is a perfect example of perseverance. I wrote it in
1990 and it was rejected 31 times over the next 12 years
before finally making it into a very cool literary magazine.
I know someone is going to love your "Me and My Toes"
essay too, so buy another
sheet of stamps and turn on your printer!
Arlene
L. Mandell is a retired college English professor living
in Santa Rosa. For information about her poetry chapbook, Variations
on a Theme, contact her at poetessalm@aol.com
HOW DO I DEAL WITH REJECTION?
You want me to write about rejection?
You expect me to say that it builds character, that rejection
has made me stronger, a more enlightened individual? You
hope I will reiterate what I've put in print elsewhere:
that acceptance or rejection cannot touch the deep place
from which we work (which when I'm the best person I can
be, I truly believe). Or can I safely say here that rejection
sucks? Shall I remind you that recently I was a baby bird
fallen from my nest of expectations, my brave little thumping
heart stomped by a big booted "NO." Does it matter whether
it's the first or tenth or twentieth such response to my
manuscript? Does it matter that interspersed among the "sorry,
but." responses there have been a raft of affirmatives,
including those from trusted readers and two agents who
loved the novel? Does writing about it (now that my vision
isn't blurred by tears and I can see the monitor) help?
Only in that, as writing always does, it gives me a word
I can use. A word that offers a clue as to why this last
rejection was harder than any I received during this past
year. The clue is "expectations."
Mostly, I hope. I hope an agent
will love the story, I hope an editor will be eager to read
it, I hope I'll get a publishing contract and be the "writer
to watch" on Good Morning America. Hope keeps me alive,
keeps me writing no matter how the work is received, because
above all I hope to write more deeply and become a better
person along the way. But this last round I went beyond
hope. I believed I'd found excellent representation and
I bought into my new agent's enthusiasm for the revision
I achieved with her guidance. I expected the novel to be
published. I visualized the copies I would send to family
and friends, the readings I would give. I'd practically
packed my bags for the book tour.
It's been a few weeks since fielding that last "sorry,
but." phone call which left me agentless. I'm okay. I'll
be fine. Thanks for asking. And, oh, regarding character.
If you need any extra, give me a call. I've got more than
enough.
Something else now comes to mind about
rejection. One evening many years ago when my son was three,
we'd arrived home to an empty house with no dinner in sight.
He was hungry and cranky, so I immediately offered to make
him some spaghetti, but realized from the look on his face-those
scrunched up eyes, the wavering lower lip-that he couldn't
last ten minutes. "All right then," I smiled, "how about
a peanut butter sandwich?" He glared at me as if I'd taken
away his favorite Ninja turtle. He'd held himself together
until this moment, but now his whole body heaved and he
let loose with sobbing. Hyperventilating, his voice filled
with the shattering of his expectations, he wailed, "AND
NO JELLY?" In that moment, even though it should have been
obvious to him that his sandwich would include jelly, because
that's how I always made them, he took me literally and
despaired of getting only the peanut butter. The writing
life is like that. Luckily, while I was struggling to hold
back the tears on that phone call with my agent, I took
notes. I just reread them. She gave me a contact at a small
publishing house (I've sent my manuscript to him.) She said
she loved the novel and is proud to have worked with me.
She told me to keep in touch, to let her know how things
go, and to send her other projects. She also said that good
writing always finds a home.
Christine Walker is the author of A Painter's
Garden: Cultivating the Creative Life. Her essay, "Symphonies,"
appears in the latest issue of Tiny Lights. Her website
is www.compozarts.com .
Rejection
In the beginning, there was no rejection,
only writing. Then the rejection began. I wrote an article
and sent it to a magazine. I didn't know about query letters.
I didn't know about clips either, which didn't matter since
I didn't have any. The magazine rejected my article. I took
that as a sign that I should not write articles.
I wrote a children's book. The publisher
rejected my manuscript because they didn't publish books
for children. I knew that, but I thought they might want
to start.
I wrote a romance novel. I figured out
the formula and thought I followed it. My best rejection
said, "Where's the romance?"
I wrote Mary's Tex/Mex Cookbook as a Christmas
gift for family and friends, but I printed a few extra copies
to submit for publication. I would have been better off
spending my time cooking chili rellenos.
Pornography. Travel. A mainstream women's novel.
I was a writer in search of a genre.
My first publication was a travel piece
in Cartwheels on the Faultline from Floreant Press.
I had found my field. I've continued to have success with
travel writing, but now I'm venturing back to other areas.
I realize that if I don't take the risk of rejection, then
I don't have a chance of acceptance.
Mary Gaffney's latest venture can be found
in Jasmine Nights and Monkey Pluck: Love, Discovery and
Tea. Find out more at www.teacupsgroup.com
No.
No, no, no, no, no, no
We regret. Sorry.
I
get "no,"
nada, not. I get it because I hear it in my head
even before it flies to my door. "Yes" is a surprise and
wonder, "no" is sandpaper, a rough truth that sometimes
rubs me the wrong way, takes a more than a little skin in
its grainy teeth. It may take a few days but the swelling
subsides.
I
write because words push me around, nip at my heels, call
for a family conference at the kitchen table, do an eye
popping lap dance in my dreams. There are journals of words
that will stay moored in their hard bound harbors but they
were the words that urged me to take a trip, round up some
of their cousins, those willing to walk around the world,
those who long to sit and talk with someone other than me.
Rejection
cuts two ways. It teaches me there's a "business" end to
writing and if I want to place an order, if I'm hoping for
a reply, I better learn all I can about how publishing "works".
It assumes I'm submitting things on a regular basis or at
least now and then. It requires the same patience, time
and energy as writing does. It helps if you know why it
is this essay or that poem deserves to be heard by ears
other than your own, to understand how well it sings, why
it came to call now. If you don't, the terse rejection letters,
which march through the mail, may point to a warp in the
weave of a story. I "know" when they're "right" when I didn't
tie the ends tight enough, or I used amber when the character
was so clearly, in hindsight, cornflower blue. And sometimes it's a no like the one your mom
gave you when you asked if you could pack a lunch and meet
Sandy at the Fallen
Tree. "No." "Why?" "Because I said so."
Oh
really? That
kind of no still raises hackles sends me storming round
the room vowing to "do it anyway!"
I
handle rejection by remembering I started writing to save
myself. I'm not going to stop. And like the sign in the
shoe shop says, "one perishes by
one's own cunning." I
can pretend "it doesn't matter" or I can get better, I can
continue to "risk" knowing that's what the words expect,
they expect me to take a stand on their behalf --- not to
back down.
Elizabeth Hannon, Santa
Rosa, CA.
It's
been less than a year since I've taken writing seriously-seriously
meaning the creative yet difficult art of revising and regularly
submitting my work. At first, the rejections I received took a significant
psychological toll. I
was naïve; I wanted to say "screw it" and give it all up. There were too damn many better writers in the
world and I just couldn't compete.
I couldn't do it.
I reread what I submitted-it looked and sounded like
a third-grade grammar exercise.
I
was surprised they even sent me form letters.
I thought maybe there would've been a scarlet question
mark scrawled on my returned submissions, or maybe they
would've included a vocation-assessment questionnaire, spanning
from ditch digging to stenography.
But
I didn't give it all up.
I couldn't do it.
I
decided to hang my rejections up on the wall in front of
my desk. I knew I wasn't the first writer to experience
this; I wasn't that naïve.
I knew that even when my work improved, I'd still
have to deal with the subjective tastes of editors, working
that submission grind. My mindset began to change nonetheless. I wanted to be better. I started joining workshops and reading through
books like David Madden's Revising Fiction.
And
the rejections kept coming-they still are-so I continually
reread and revise my work, and then send it right back out
there again. I also try to do my marketing homework and get
a feel for the publication, but I don't always spend a lot
of time on that part of the process-it's still a crapshoot
and I still have a lot to learn.
I
feel like I'm a paperboy again, riding my bike in the predawn
darkness through a strange neighborhood with judging eyes
peering at me from behind pulled shades and curtains.
I try to work on my throws as I pedal down the street,
but I keep hitting bottlebrush and juniper.
One
of these days I'll hit a porch, and a light will go on inside.
The sky's as blue as the eyes of a ridgeback pup. No clouds.
Three crows are sitting in a cottonwood tree hacking cackles
back and forth. Out-of-work potato pickers laze in line
at the employment office waiting to draw their checks. You
look at the pavement. Pink gum has hardened between stones
mixed with asphalt. A copper penny is abraded flat by days
of car tires. She looks at you with a mask that hides emotion
like goodies stuffed in a paper bag. Trucks rumble on a
highway someplace. You think about kneeling, know it won't
do any good. She tries to smile. You grit your teeth, promise
to be perfect, always defer. You position your hands as
if in supplication to the Virgin Mary. Overhead, two sparrows
fornicate on the telephone wire. Her eyes look past yours
to the old white stucco building with the second hand store
and the locksmith. The day is waning. It ain't coming back.
How about a kitchen knife in the aorta.
Rejection comes in different sizes. The literary ones sting
for several days, but don't make you go on a walk about
for two years.
We're writers, no? We live in a mental maze of events created
in our own imagination. Write a novel and get one hundred
sixty-five form rejections composed as to humiliate all
writers off all levels of all genres at any time. Makes
you want to set your feet and scratch the dirt with indignation
like a pit bull ready for a fight. No problem here, eh?
We can just wish it away; rejection I mean.
Well, OK, maybe not. Rejection is a demon with the heart of
a blackguard. I'd like to slice its evil ticker with a saber.
Do it down. Take it out. But what the hell, we'll see rejection's
demise right after the arrival of the Messiah. It will stop
bothering us about the time all those gnashy-toothed harpies
shriek the world into eternal peace.
Yo - sayonara, baby - the reaper will collect his due.
And the legion rejecters, too.
So we must --- just --- gird up our loins.
Ladies and gentlemen, throw down you harquebuses and cutlasses.
Get to writing.
Ken Rodgers, Sebastopol, CA
How
I Deal with Rejection:
The honest truth? I don't. Well, that's a half-truth.
I have finally figured out, after about two hundred of those
familiar S.A.S.E's I labored over two-six months earlier,
have made their way back to my mailbox that there's almost
no point in opening them; when an editor adores your work,
they CALL you, because contrary to my common experience
of them they don't waste any time when they actually want
something.
So
when a rejection arrives, I open it with the same dread
as a bill and tell myself it won't hurt, not even a pinch
to hear the ever-familiar lines of a pre-printed rejection:
"Thank you for submitting to our magnificent journal
blah blah but we can't place your paltry work at this time."
But it does hurt, just like hitting your funny bone is still
going to hurt the tenth time you bang it on your desk in
frustration.
I'm
sick of their passive-aggressive stances. I want to hear
"You blather on and on like an idiot for four paragraphs
before we see anything we like..." or "You had
us at 'moon-rise' but you just had to keep going, didn't
you?" Because it's only the courteous thing to do to
inform me why it didn't work or grab their attention or
why Sy Safransky, for the umpteenth time, just didn't "fall
in love with" my work again, right?
What
I do most of the time is reinforce the flimsy walls of my
ego by re-reading a piece of my work that I really like,
something that I might even have gotten nice feedback on
from others at one point, and I say "yeah, I can do
this. I'm not full of crap."
Then
I eat lots of cheese. Or drink too much coffee, checking
my voicemail and email over and over again waiting for that
call that will make everything right.
Jordan
E. Rosenfeld, Petaluma, CA. Creator/Host of the LiveWire
Literary Salon, Participant in National Novel Writing Month
2002. For more info about the LiveWire schedule, go to www.thewritelife.com
When
I receive a rejection slip-- my husband and I can always
tell by the thin contents of the self-addressed envelope--
I write a brief sentence to the publishing house saying,
"Thank you for notifying me about the status of the story
I sent you." This objectivity frees me from tortured
postmortems about my worth as a writer.
Ariel
Smart
arielsmart@yahoo.com
Immediately
upon being rejected I remind myself that the rejector-in-question
sleeps with the family dog.
Joseph
(Joe) Kelley
DEALING WITH
REJECTION
How do
I deal with rejection? Poorly, I would say. Yes, I think
that best describes it.
My proxy crawls back-three-to-six penniless
months after I send it-clad in its prophetic self-addressed
stamped envelope. Inside, it bears the oily heel print of
a perfunctory "Thank You But Unfortunately" letter.
Despite the drill of past experience,
my heart exsanguinates. The ensuing motivational anemia
forces me to bed where I pine for my lost spirit and dashed
enthusiasm for the rest of the day.
Shortly, my corpus callosum short-circuits.
I pull the covers over my head and fantasize about a more
gratifying life in which my talents, ambitions, and affections
lead to a respectable, financially rewarding vocation -
garbage collection, for example.
I grow sullen. All attempts at solace
by friends and family fail to move me, although plying me
with pound cake topped with chopped banana, walnut ice cream,
maple syrup, and marshmallow fluff will occasionally come
close.
I rewind and play Stuart Saves His
Family for the sixth consecutive time. Stuart Smalley,
member of every 12-step program known to man, predicts,
as he always does, that not only will he fail to save his
family but he will die in a gutter - unknown, unloved, and
thirty pounds overweight. In the face of an acceptance letter,
I would find this funny. Now, I nod in morose empathy.
This malaise passes. Eventually.
When it does, I feebly rise from my bed and pick the sticky
walnuts and pound cake from my clothes. Then, I wobble to
my desk. There, I press the creases and puckers from my
paper surrogate. I dress it up with a deceptively cheerful
cover letter and seal it (and yet another two-dollar-and-fifty-cent
SASE) within a fresh 10" by 13" mailer.
As I approach the corner mailbox, my wounded
soul cries out, "Mother of God, please, not again!"
But, I take a long, slow, deep breath (Ohm Mani Padme) and
plunge it for the fifth, sixth, seventh ... time into the
mysterious postal conduit that leads back into the hostile
world of heavy-booted strangers.
Again, I wait.
Rodney
Lewis Merrill is a highly published freelance writer. Rodney
lives in Astoria with his wife,
Kate Merrill, in Astoria Oregon. He can be contacted
at RLMerrill@charter.net.
On a good day, he will respond.
I deal with rejection by reminding myself with each
one that the person who is rejecting my work is only
rejecting my work, not me. They probably don't even know
more of me than what appears in my writing, so they can't
possibly be rejecting me. They don't really know me. Rejections
can stem from all sorts of things:
A change in editorial direction.
A new ad campaign.
An editor's fight with her
boyfriend or her teenaged daughter.
A lunch that didn't agree
with him.
A boss that didn't agree with
him.
A late night.
An early morning.
A stockpile of articles or poems or whatever, all just
like mine.
A desk six inches deep in
manuscripts of all kinds and a migraine headache.
An irrational dislike of my
name or the title of my article.
A rejection seldom means, "Your work stinks!"
It usually means, "Your work, for whatever reason,
isn't what I need or want right now." It just means
I need to keep looking for the right place for my work.
It means not giving up.
And if reminding myself of all that doesn't work, there
are always prank phone calls and sticking pins in editor
dolls. (Just kidding, Susan!)
Betty Winslow
Bowling Green, OH
Those of you who have accumulated that
wall of rejection slips can sneer when I say that most of
what I know about rejection I learned by dishing it out.
I admit that I am a sniveling coward when it comes to putting
my own toes on the line. I started Tiny Lights as
a way to honor good writing. I planned it like a party and
dreamed of all who might appear on my guest list. But to
my horror, I discovered that in order to say "yes" to a
few fine writers, I had to learn to say "no" to many, many
more. Over the last eight years, I have watched hundreds
of writers doing the very thing I find most difficult-exposing
themselves to judgment. It is only by their example that
I've been able to take similar risks with my own distressingly
fragile ego.
Whenever a publication rejects me, I am
still tempted to slink off into oblivion with my tail between
my legs, but it's hard to sit there pouting when I have
seen rejected writers willing to enter my essay contest
year after year, giving us both another chance for acceptance.
Every time I receive one of their courteous notes thanking
me for my time and consideration, I remember that I want
to be the kind of writer who can disengage from disappointment
and gracefully move on. Every now and then a writer will
compose a letter that impugns my intelligence and character,
but most of us agree that it is better to build a bridge
than burn one.
And if I am accepted for publication,
there is still the act of bowing to the editor's knife,
a humbling ordeal whenever the editing is aimed in my direction.
Here is another opportunity to feel rejected. After all
that work, the writing isn't good enough? In my role as
editor, I've noticed that those with the least publishing
experience tend to resist the hardest at this stage, but
more seasoned writers graciously regard editors as
facilitators. Of course, it's important for
these writers to protect the integrity of their work, so
they have shown me how to consider editorial suggestions
with an open mind and a grain or two of salt.
I don't know why it's still so painful
to be reminded that not everyone loves me or my writing,
but without my experiences with Tiny Lights I might
be further burdened by the notion that everything an editor
takes a pass on is BAD writing. Hardly.
I have found myself being insufficiently moved by an essay
to accept it, only to see that same piece of writing get
published elsewhere to great acclaim. These passed over
essays are further proof that objectivity simply does not
exist. Turn over a pile of writing to a judging panel and
discover how easy it is for intelligent, well-respected
jurors to disagree with you and with each other. After the
dust settles and the winning essays are published, the amazingly
varied feedback sometimes makes me wonder who is reading
what.
But you can't learn to handle a bike by
watching someone else ride. Writing is not a spectator sport.
Sooner or later, I'm going to have to take off the training
wheels, fall down, collect some more lumps, get
a little dirty. You know, "You can't win if you don't enter"?
But once I get over my fear that rejection might kill me,
I'll find myself surrounded by really great company.
Susan Bono is still working up her courage
at sbono@tiny-lights.com