Rejection Can Be Good?

This article was submitted anonymously by one of our staff at The Queue. The premise--rejection can be good--is not what we want to hear. I never believed that old adage that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. But I have to believe there is something to be learned from rejection. Let's see what Anonymous has to say.

Rejection Can Be Good - to a point.

Serious writers who think their work is mature enough to submit to publishers will likely face rejection in the beginning. In the early stages of one’s writing career, this can be a good thing. For anyone who has experienced it, rejection can be painful but also the perfect wind for stoking the fire of creativity, that tireless blaze that launches one strongly and surely out of bed in the morning.

The first rejection is a rite of passage; you’re in the game.

The second--you’re disappointed but you tweak your work, pulling out what you hope are
the last straggling weeds.

Rejected a third time (the standard rejection without any helpful remarks, and this time it took four months for a reply)--you begin to wonder if your manuscript has any merit at all or if it has even been read.

Multiple rejections--the “notches in the belt” soon become a wearisome string of holes. And a belt full of holes doesn’t hold up much anymore.

One might find consolation in hearing a few rejection stories of famous writers.

E. E. Cummings’ first poems were rejected by a dozen publishers before his mother stepped in to help him self publish. Rudyard Kipling was told in a rejection letter that he ”just did not know how to use the English language.” Madeline L’Engle’s Newbery Award winning A Wrinkle in Time was rejected countless times before it found the right home. And Arthur Golden, in a rejection story recounted at a website devoted to rejection stories, rejectioncollection.com (The Reject’s Rag), tells of his agented Memoirs of a Geisha being rejected and criticized repeatedly for being dull. At one point he asked himself, "Should I ditch this thing and try to get a job somewhere?" Through a grueling IRS audit, Golden rewrote the story in first person from the eyes of a child which made it a compelling bestseller.

Had Arthur Golden succumbed to the pressures of life and become despondent over his countless rejections, he may never have reworked his fine novel and we would have missed out on a truly golden tale. One can only guess at the number of brave writers with equally wonderful reject stories who just gave up.