How I Overcame Writer's Rejection
Authors Note: This piece was originally published on my Medium account @jdyerwrites. I have since grown tired of that platform and am moving my writing solely back to Bear.
Some of my earliest memories are of a young me sitting on my grandmother’s living room floor surrounded by crayons and markers. Beyond the circle of writing instruments was a stack of manilla paper covered in crudely drawn sea creatures that I had been copying out of a book. I had painstakingly tried to draw each animal, then copied the text that was below each fish onto my own paper. I was an author, and I was going to publish this masterpiece when I grew up.
Of course, eight year old me had no idea what plagiarism was, but that didn’t matter. Young Justin just wanted to be a writer. If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you can relate.
My entire life has been plagued by the love of the written word — mostly other people’s words. Riding the coattails of this love is my inner critic who insists that everything I write is trash. This tagalong has held back my writing for decades. While rejecting my own writing is pretty terrible, having someone else reject hours of your life hunched over a keyboard is a special type of demoralizing. Alas, over time, I’ve learned that is what happens when you put your work out in the world. Someone is not going to like your ideas. The grammar police will show up and call you out for that missed comma, or for ending a sentence in a preposition. A basement dweller may DM you that you should keep your day job.
This fear of rejection keeps writers in their comfort zones. I spent decades in mine, either simply not writing or deleting whatever I did write because I felt it wasn’t good enough. Not expert enough. Justin Whitmel Early, in his book Habits of the Household, gives this advice:
“I find I am drawn to write about the things I struggle with…I’m qualified to write about this stuff not because I am so good at it, I’m qualified to write about this stuff because I need it so badly.”
That is a truly freeing statement. Early is speaking about parenting advice, but as someone who has long struggled with whether or not I am qualified to write about leadership, civil service, or books and post those ideas on the internet, I find comfort in those words. I am qualified to do this work not because I am an expert, but because I learn from it too. I’m not a sage on a mountain top, I’m just an average guy with a laptop and a spotty internet connection. What do I know? As I’ve aged, grown wiser, and more confident in my writing, I’ve started to put my ideas out into the world.
I recently posted about “How I learned to Write Again.” What I left out of that piece was the why behind needing to go through that process.
I was rejected.
In that story, I mentioned submitting a fiction piece to a magazine and not being selected for publication. That stung. I had already spent the award money in my mind. I was going to be able to tell my friends and family that I had finally become a paid writer. That dream shattered in an auto-generated rejection email.
I quit writing for a while. These rejections reinforced what my inner critic had been telling me all along, “I’m not good enough.”
You can see the dip in my publication frequency on Medium and on my blog. Not a thing was posted in the month of February. On the outside, I acted like it didn’t affect me, but it did.
I’d never put my writing out in the world like that. The only eyes besides mine that had seen anything I’ve written in the preceding decade were my wife’s, and she has to tell me I’m doing a good job, right?
The first time I put my words out in the world, I was shot down.
And it hurt.
I’ve read the stories of authors with hundreds of rejection letters, but I think some little part of all of us believes that surely that will never happen to me. Then it does, and our bubble pops and we are left sitting in a puddle of despair trying to sort out where we went wrong. Some, like me, quit writing for a while. More resilient souls shout, “screw it,” and keep pounding keys.
I admire those people. But at the end of the day, I can’t stop writing forever. I love it too much. I learned to turn that rejection into motivation. I applied for Medium’s partner program a second time only to be rejected again. But this time I kept going. I put more words out into the world. On my blog, on Medium. To a library news site. I even pitched an article to a library journal.
Perseverance.
We always hear that the best writing advice is consistency, but if you’re trying to make it in an overcrowded game, I think it takes a bit of stubbornness too. Thousands of us are all chasing the same dream. Most will never see success. A rare few will be the next Stephen King and become a household name all across the world. Some will land somewhere in the middle.
It’s far too early to see where I will fall on that spectrum, but my stubbornness has seen some success. I finally became a paid writer by being accepted into Medium’s partner program on my third try. It even paid me a bit of money a few days ago. This certainly isn’t a get rich quick scheme, but I can finally say I have two pennies to rub together as a writer.
A screenshot of my first Medium Earnings. It amounts to $0.02.
My article pitch to the library journal was accepted and published recently. It wasn’t paid, but that byline is a pretty sweet thing for a writer trying to be taken seriously.
I even had someone on Medium reach out to me and ask me to write for their publication, after they read my article on going analog. That felt pretty good too. Those little wins give me the motivation to keep going. The rejections remain far greater, but they sting a little less as I grow used to expecting them. I no longer spend the prize money in my mind before I have even submitted a story.
My wife recently recommended I read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, the Author of Eat, Pray Love. I must admit I was skeptical at first, Gilbert is not my typical genre of reading, but in this book on creativity she shares that of submitting a short story to a publication and receiving a rejection letter from the publisher. A few years later, after some success, Gilbert’s agent submitted the same story to the same publication without having made any changes to it. It was accepted by the same Editor, and given high praise by them. I think it shows the fickleness of the publishing industry. They are all looking for different things at different times. What works one day will not work the next.
Much like being rejected by your first crush, the rejection letters from publishers will make us or break us as writers. We can choose to wallow in self pity or put ourselves back out there and find someone who appreciates us and our work. Who knows, maybe that crush will eventually change their mind and see how great we are and give us a chance.
William Zinsser, in his seminal work, On Writing Well, says that “the essence of writing is, rewriting.” Of course he is speaking about the editing process, but if we extrapolate that out, the essence of becoming a published writer is trying over and over again, until we succeed.
I’ve chosen to wipe the tears from my eyes and keep going. What will you do?
I’m Justin. I write about librarianship, leadership, public service, and books. If you found this piece relatable, leave me a like or send me an email. Subscribe if you want more of what’s bouncing around in my head. If you found this article helpful, consider buying me a coffee.