"Rejection Therapy" and Querying

I haven't suffered as much rejection as many, but I always reminded myself that William Saroyan received a stack of rejections as tall as his desk, just over four thousand in all, before selling his first short story. Erskine Caldwell received enough rejections to stuff a large suitcase before selling his first short story, enough that he said they made a very satisfactory bonfire when he burned them after receiving his first acceptance.

So what do I have to complain about?

I used to see rejections as battle wounds and they'd fire me up to keep going.

Now I just expect rejections, and each one gets a "meh, whatevs". It makes the process a whole lot easier for me.

It was much easier for me to take rejections from agents while querying. I viewed those as battle wounds, and now I *really* knew what it was like to be an author, and I'd show 'em.

Now each reject from a publishing house is like a stab in the gut. Maybe it's because I know there are many more agents out there than publishers, and the list of options is dwindling. Maybe it's because I'm so darn close to my dream coming true, but it just won't happen.

My plan: Get a kitchen timer. Upon receiving rejection, set it for fifteen minutes and have a hugely profane hissy fit (private) until the timer goes off. Then file the rejection and onward.

This also works for bad reviews and other professional snubs.

Don't forget the privacy, and no resetting the timer, except in case of MAJOR rejections and one star reviews, when you can go for a second fifteen minutes.

Keep the faith, brs. I hope that's not the case.

Rejection happens at every stage of publishing — well, maybe not to Stephen King. I dunno, I'll never be there. But I know writers who've had several books published and despair of their ability ever to get published again. It's a tough business that can't be most people's sole source of support, emotional or financial. It can give you dizzying highs and aching lows. (Seriously, I feel like a gambler every time I pitch a fiction idea, and I am so not a gambler type.)

When you start getting a mixture of acceptance and rejection, that's when it starts getting easier to put rejections in perspective and move on, in my experience. On the other hand, braving it out through 90% rejection (which I had for a time) can really toughen your hide. You just have to find ways to learn and improve (i.e., get honest feedback from CPs) and avoid becoming embittered.

Once you start getting more positive responses, breaking through the wall of no, the rejections may start hurting again. That's natural. For those of us who are thin-skinned, anyway, I think handling rejection is cyclical. You never really learn to shrug it off, but your lows get less low. It sucks, but it doesn't necessarily send you into a spiral of depression.

The worst are those moments where you're so close and then hear a no. I'm not sure there's any way to keep those from hurting, but perspective is a wonderful thing. ETA: And I like Phaeal's method!

I'm keeping the rejection emails, but not doing anything interesting like that thing with the nail. Only 4 confirmed rejections so far and I already feel like I've been hit with a hammer (see what I did there), so I dread to think how those with 100's of rejections keep soldiering on.

I've just started querying and acquired 2 rejections. It didn't sting as hard as I thought it would, probably because I've read so much about how mostly everyone gets rejected a lot. I was kinda excited when i got my first rejection lol because it felt like I've taken the first step, some people don't even get that far.

What I'm trying to say is that we've taken a step closer to where we want to be and rejection is part of the process, we'll never get there if we give up - that's what I remind myself anyway.

I'm very sensitive and I think it will hurt more as the rejections pile on but for now that works.

I've been very interested in that Rejection Therapy for personal reasons, but when I was selling screenplays, it's a lot different than querying books. It's more common to call the (grumpy, overworked) agent or producers's office and find the person who accepts submissions. Agent's assistant or for a prodoffice, the director of development.
Verbal pitching is still really big I hear, and it's the most terrifying thing you can do because if you falter, you will be torn apart verbally without hesitation. I'd go back in if I thought I had anything worth selling.

I'm apparently already doing that because I have a filter set up on my e-mail that sends anything with "query" or "submission" to a folder called, "Rejection Spam."

Tazlima said:

Heard about this on the radio this morning.

A man named Jia Jiang has been practicing dealing with rejection by requesting ridiculous things from strangers. His theory is that if he goes into a scenario expecting to be rejected, the rejection doesn't really sting and he'll become more confident when asking for something.

Click to expand...

Mmm, well, I generally expect to be rejected when I query anything, and it's true that nothing stings really because it's expected but uh...more confidence? Not so much, yet... I just keep expecting to get rejected. Unless that's confidence.

Getting a story published is hard, but getting rejected is easy, so I decided to measure myself against that nail. Each rejection is a badge of honor, concrete proof that I tried. Whenever one arrives, I get to add to the pile! Of course, I'd prefer to have my stories accepted, but until that day comes, my goal is to get more rejections than Stephen King. I may never match his success, but by golly I can surpass his failures!

How do you guys motivate yourselves to keep querying?

Click to expand...

Lol

When I first started I had that "badge of honor" idea, I guess, but that quickly got old and now...I just don't care either way about individual rejections; it is a mostly meaningless exercise. I don't save them (well, I guess my email does it automatically, but you know what I mean); I barely read them. What I care about, I suppose, is the overall effect--getting some shadow of an answer to whether the book can be sold. Like, I kind of care that I have a 100% rejection rate for one of my books, in a "well I'm not sure what to do with this now" sort of way, but...not really in "that stings" sort of way. I expected it. I had just hoped to be proven wrong.

The tricky part is being on the correct side of the apathy line. If I am too far in the realm of not giving a shit, then I don't query at all, because...that would require effort. I have to be more in a mood where I can do whatever because it doesn't matter what I do so whee *flings queries everywhere*. You know, the freedom kind of apathy, rather than the "I'll just take a nap instead" kind.

I don't particularly do anything to push myself one way or another. It's not really about motivation so much as energy, I suppose. Right now, I don't have much. So I'm not querying at the moment. That's all right because I had a short burst at the beginning of the month, so at least something is out there. Just riding the dirty merry-go-round. (It's dirty because I never clean and there are a lot of pizza boxes)