by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
I saw her for the first time on the playground.
The sun was shining, and her hair, so blonde it was almost white, glistened in the light. She turned and looked at me with eyes as blue as the sky above the smog line in Los Angeles. And I felt something in my chest, a burning of some sort.
I was only in third grade, but I knew I was in love.
Now the question was what to do about it.
I did not get the impression Susan was at all interested in my amour. I was not adept at talking to girls, having only two older brothers. I did, however, know how to show off. I was a great kickball player, so I tried to impress her on the kickball diamond.
She was not impressed.
I walked to school, entering and exiting through the front gate. She also walked to school, but entered through the back gate. So I came up with a plan. After school one day, I waited for Susan to head out and strolled along so I met her—what a coincidence!—at the back gate.
We went out together, and I started walking with her. I made some sort of comment, though I can’t remember what it was. Maybe it was about the book our teacher was reading to us, a Henry Huggins book by Beverly Cleary.
Anyway, we were halfway down the block when she turned to me and said, “Just because I’m walking with you doesn’t mean you’re my boyfriend.” The way she said that last word was a killer. She was mocking me. She reached in my chest and pulled out my heart, and said, “You won’t be needing this anymore” and tossed it in the gutter.
“I know,” I said, in a bid to salvage a shred of dignity. I endured the whole walk to her house. Then began the lonely march back to the school, through the back gate, across the playground, through the front gate, and home. I drowned my sorrows with drink. Chocolate milk, I think it was.
I didn’t know it then, but I was being prepared for the life of a writer.
Rejection Has Always Been Part of this Business
Before the self-publishing era, all writers got rejection slips and letters from magazines, agents, editors. We got used to seeing lines like, This does not fit our current needs.
The Peanuts cartoon strip had a bunch of strips where Snoopy was trying to be a writer. In one, Snoopy is reading a letter he’d just received. “Dear contributor, thank you for submitting your story to our magazine. To save time, we are enclosing two rejection slips, one for this story and one for the next story you send us.”
Then self-publishing came along. Free from editorial rejection, many a writer put their book up on Amazon, and faced another kind of rejection—from the marketplace.
We all have to learn to deal with the Big R.
I knew of a writer who got one of those wild, big fat 1990s contracts. But his thriller failed to catch enough fire to make back most of the advance. Thus, the next book in the two-book contract received no support. The author was dropped, and could not get another contract from a major publisher. He was, in my opinion, a very good writer. He handled the Big R by turning to the bottle. But he battled out of that and last I saw he had done a few books with a small publisher. And good for him.
What you have to do is accept that rejection is perpetual aspect of this business. It will happen to all of us. You must be ready to deal with it, and the best way to do that is by writing your way out.
When my son was first pitching Little League, he had a tendency to let a bad play or a home run upset him. So early on I made this rule. “You are allowed one ‘Dang it!’ And you can hit your glove as hard as you want. But that’s it. Then you go back to pitching to the next guy.”
That’s what he learned to do, and in fact won a championship game that way.
So you get a rejection. You can have one “Dang it!” (or its adult equivalent). I’ll let you feel it for fifteen minutes. But that’s it. Don’t hang onto it. Don’t go moaning all over the Internet. Don’t yell at your spouse or kick your dog.
Instead, turn that energy into action. Get back to your keyboard.
Any further advice on handling rejection?
And Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!
Yes, first I also wish Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. My Dad is no longer with us and he is missed very much. And hugs to those who didn’t have a good dad in their life.
RE: Rejections: While granted, I have extremely limited experience with making submissions in the first place, the rejection I received, while not fun, did not sink me. And yes, it was the standard sort of ‘not right for us’ type of response. And in that sense, it’s not getting rejected that’s annoying, it’s getting rejected without any usable feedback. Yeah I know, the editors always say they don’t have time to make a useful response.
For me the much greater battle is criticizing my own work. Even for self-pub. The process of getting off my own back has been glacially slow but I am improving. You just gotta keep writing and putting it out there.
You gotta keep writing.
It’s the only way. Carpe Typem.
I submitted two things this week. So far they haven’t been rejected, so I’ll live in the Land of Hope for a bit while I work on the next thing.
Exactly! We all have cabanas on the beach in the Land of Hope!
I absolutely agree about taking that energy from rejection and turning into action, getting back to the keyboard and writing a killer scene, having as much fun as humanly possible in the process. I’d also use some of that energy to send that story or novel out again.
It can help, too, to reframe things: you weren’t rejected, the market passedon your submission. The agent or publisher took a pass on the project, not on you.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s out there!
Right on, Dale. There are many hilarious rejections that have been sent over the years. One was to Orwell: “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.”
And for Mr. King and Carrie: “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.”
🤣
Happy Father’s Day to all from our campsite next to our son and his family. My dad has been gone over half my life and there are very few days I don’t think of him. He was a writer, who passed on his love of words and books to his six children.
I think it’s interesting that storytelling in the beginning was not criticized, it was just enjoyed. My parents, and especially my grandparents, would tell us stories and we simply enjoyed them. Never thought of picking them apart or saying their delivery wasn’t correct. Was it formal schooling that turned us into people who did everything with the final grade in mind? We poured our hearts into an English paper and were either jubilant for the A or devastated with a D. (I never got below an A- on any school paper, but that minus crushed me.) Is this why a writer whose book is rejected takes it as a personal attack? Oh, for a mind and psyche that could just allow me to write for the joy of it!
That’s the ticket. Find the joy, bask in it, and get back to it as soon as you can. Happy Father’s Day to you and your family! Cook some Spam.
Spam=👍👍
This is still my “favorite”
“We did review your proposal, and for some reason we don’t feel we can represent it. Some of them come close, and yours may well be one of those, but we do have our reasons for declining.”
How helpful!
I didn’t know it at the time but it helped to have a super critical husband critique my early work. “This sounds stupid” or “ why would you use a dollar word when a quarter word is better.” It prepared me for rejection for sure.
Bluntness works, doesn’t it?
Indeed it does. I’m known as a very lean writer. I wonder why. Lol
Novelist David Cates gave me the best advice: Instead of dreading rejections, make it your GOAL to receive 100 rejections.
Funny thing happens along the way. As you keep trying to gain more rejections, acceptances start coming, too!
That’s really a good piece of advice. I seem to recall someone writing a book about trying to go out and get 100 rejections, and good things happened.
My first agent taught me two useful things: when you’re rejected, never bad mouth your editor. Publishing is a small business.
Learn from your rejections. For my first mystery, several rejections said the same thing: the book needed more plot twists. I added a pound of red herrings and it sold.
Now, I whine to my husband, throw things and then call up a writer friend who understands.
Then I go back to writing.
A perfectly sound formula, Elaine. Especially the part about not bad-mouthing. That never helps.
Good post, Jim!
Handling rejections in a positive way is an important skill to learn.
Here’s another helpful one: “I wouldn’t know which Amazon shelf to put it on.” Huh? 🥴
This regarding a novel about a married mother of four who is afraid she will die the next day.
Can anyone say “Women’s Fiction”, just to start us off?
Happy Daddy’s Day!
Years ago, a rejection I received was followed the next day by a public announcement that the publisher had had enough of all the crap and was ceasing publication. The rejection was bad enough, but feeling responsible for that publisher quitting the business was worse. It didn’t stop me, though.