Rejection (Or "Why Does It Feel Like I Keep Failing?")

"Three failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice."

- Minna Thomas Antrim

Well, I've finally returned to the realm of blogging. It only took three months, right? So - with the inspirational quote above - I write my first back-to-blog post about rejection, and feeling like a failure.

I am a writer. It's no surprise to anyone who has ever read this (which I am still convinced is just Jaime, or actually - recently! - I had the sincere honor of having Dan Harmon read my blog post about his show Community. So thank you for that, Dan!) that I am someone who loves to write, and who thrives on writing. And not to toot my own horn or anything, but I have had my work published in a few literary journals, and it has definitely been quite an exciting experience.

However, I can honestly say that I have had my work rejected much more than I have had it accepted. And though I know that this is part of the writing process, sometimes it discourages me. I read my  poems and short stories, and when I finally feel like they are edited enough to be published, I submit them. And I feel a sense of pride when I e-mail those attachments. No, they are not perfect pieces. There is no such thing as a perfect poem or a perfect story. But I feel like they are complete - ready. Then, they are - nine times out of ten - rejected.

I had a professor in college once - Professor David Athey, who is to this day my favorite college professor - who told our Creative Writing and Publishing workshop that for every 100 pieces you submit, you will usually get 1 acceptance. Perhaps that is a fairly accurate estimate (or at least it feels like it is an accurate estimate). But when you open your inbox, and your heart flutters at the sight of a response e-mail from that journal that you submitted to, and then you open it only to find a non-personalized rejection letter...well, sometimes you get just a little bit bummed out.

That quote of the day above is pretty encouraging though, is it not? I think that so many times we take rejections personally. We think that someone has a vendetta against us - against our style of writing or our use of images or our way of storytelling. And perhaps, yes, there may be a grain of truth in there. Perhaps the way that we tell a story is not what they are looking for. But in order to succeed in writing - or really anything in life - I believe that we have to learn to not take rejection personally. Instead of looking at being rejected by someone (be it friend, job, etc.) as a failure, we should really begin to look at it as a stepping stone.

Rejection does not denote failure, as much as I sometimes like to believe it does. Instead, failure is determined by how you respond to rejection. Do you pick yourself back up and work harder to improve that which was rejected? Because - let's be honest - if something is rejected for any kind of position, chances are that it is not at the very best it could possibly be. I read poems and stories that I submitted years ago, and go back and tweak them. Why? Because - at the time - I had this rose-colored view of my work. When you read your work the moment that you write it, it seems perfect, does it not? My challenge would be to let the piece (whatever it is) ferment on your computer, or in your home for a while - let's say a week, for starters. Then go back and review. The majority of the time, you'll find that "perfect" piece you love so much isn't quite as perfect as you had remembered it to be.

(And well, I will return for another blog entry about revisions and my difficulties with them. But that's for another time.)

I think the true determining factor of an artist is not hinged on how many places your work has been submitted. Sure, it's nice to construct cover letters with four or five different places of reference. Does it feel good to say that you are "published"? Of course it does. But the true artist does not focus on what has been accepted, but rather what has been rejected. Because when you look at what hasn't worked, only then can you improve and learn to create something that does.