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Surviving a Rejection
Tsunami
By Roy A. Barnes
From March 31, 2005 to May 3, 2005, I pegged twenty-six rejections, including
seven in one twenty-four hour span. During that same time frame, I garnered
only one acceptance. My mentor of seven years characterized this experience as
a "rejection tsunami." During this tsunami, I must admit that I experienced
feelings that alternated between depression and being emotionally clubbed over
and over.
On May 4, the plot to this writing phenomenon of the worst kind took a strange
twist. I have a friend who is an aspiring artist. He was to take a young lady
to a benefit, but she backed out on him at the last minute, so he asked me to
come along. This benefit just happened to be called "Southeast Asia: The Hope
(After the Tsunami)." Granted, the event was on behalf of the victims of the
natural disaster that occurred in December 2004. Still, I decided to attend,
anticipating that a symbolic message of hope would be in store for me, given the
timing of the benefit, and by what my mentor had quipped to me days earlier.
One of the speakers, a retired professor of geology, said that tsunamis come as
a result of a build up of pressure in the earth. I had been submitting so many
queries and completed works since the end of January (a literary build-up of
pressure), that it was inevitable I would get walloped with a litany of
rejection slips and e-mails during such a short time frame. But just like the
name of the benefit for the tsunami victims, I’ve come to the conclusion that
hope exists for my writing career after my first rejection tsunami. Why? Let me
tell you where I stood with my writing as of the summer of 2004.
I had never made one dime from writing, other than receiving a twelve-pack of
Coca-Cola from a former co-worker. She ditched writing an article for the
company newsletter, and then asked me on short notice to compose the article
instead. I was rewarded with a half a case of my favorite soft drink. Up to
that time, my writing career could be summed up as letters to the editors of
local papers and writing for company newsletters, none of which generated any
cash for my efforts. I half-heartedly sent out one to three travel-related or
literary submissions per year using outdated writers' market books. I futilely
hoped for an acceptance and a check from an editor with this approach.
Since 2004, a lot has changed due to a number of notable milestones. I've been
invited to press trips. I actually attended my first one while that rejection
tsunami was in force. I have been paid in real money for my works. Besides
acceptances of my work, some editors have given me encouragement. My writing
and editing skills have improved greatly. I'm more adept at researching markets
and following writers' guidelines. Yes, I've made dumb mistakes, and let downs
are still a fact of life for my writing career. Still, hope resides in me
because getting all those rejections meant that I’d been generating a lot of
queries and submissions. With each query and submission, my writing skills have
improved. The key is to persevere and let the acceptances come as they may.
Up until the middle of June 2004, I was employed full-time by a regional
airline. I made decent money and had good benefits, but I was very unfulfilled.
The three to four weeks a year of vacation time were all I looked forward to.
The other forty-eight weeks a year were spent constantly fantasizing about the
four weeks of escape from a working life of utter boredom and irritation. Yet
what I have found is that since I've gotten more serious about my writing, most
days are like an adventure; and thus, I don't find myself constantly fantasizing
about faraway places.
When I told my boss last year that I was resigning, he commented to me that I
wouldn't find an easier job or place to work at. That was the problem: doing
the easy thing just isn't fulfilling. The answer doesn't lie in walking the
path the masses trample on day after day, year after year.
When people get more serious about pursuing their dreams, they often find
themselves caught between the Egyptians chasing them in one direction (the
unfulfilled life of bondage) while staring at the raging Red Sea of uncertainty
in the other. They can't go back, but can only move forward and hope the waters
will part. As for me, I won't go back to the bondage of an unfulfilling career.
Maybe I will never become a famous writer nor even get to the point to where I
can totally sustain myself economically with my writing. But for more than a
year now, I’ve been experiencing a great and continuous odyssey because I have
chosen to follow my heart like never before!
Roy A. Barnes is a freelance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming. His
writing-themed articles have appeared at such publications like The Fabulist
Flash, The Busy Freelancer, The InkSpotter News, and FundsforWriters Small
Markets. His travel articles have appeared at Transitions Abroad, GoNOMAD.com,
and The Valley Advocate.
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