...on rejection (and how to accept it)

I had a sort of revelation whilst making my tri-weekly trek to Einstein Brothers' coffee to pay my $2.01 to Sarah (usually it's Maria) for a large coffee cup. I made my way through the physical maze in order to reach my brew, a ritual that has become sort of a skill, and was greeted (as I often am) by the spunky old guy patrolling the coffee area who constantly shouts “HOT FRESH COFFEE! COMIN' THROUGH!” It was (and still is) a day like any other.

The revelation (which I'll get to momentarily) was inspired by two things. The first being my completion of Stephen King's On Writing. The second was my recent rejection email from The Cypress Dome, which was similar enough to any other rejection email, reminiscent of a bottle-cap's infamous taunt of “Sorry, try again” spurred by yet another soda company contest.

I realized that no matter how much coffee I drink, no matter how many dead authors' names I casually drop, no matter how much classic literature I claim to read, no matter how much I tout myself as a writer, no matter how many English credits I acquire at UCF, no matter how much I brood about rejection emails, and no matter how many “favorite books” I have on my Facebook page, none of these things, or a combination of them, will make me a “good” writer.

The only way to get better is to write. Oh, and read.

Of course many of the attributes listed above are instrumental to what it is that I do. To me, “coffee” has become synonymous with “work,” and gets me “in the mood.” I have read a fair amount of classic literature, and I could have read much, much more, which helps me understand what I like and don't like and ultimately aids in shaping my style. My English courses are certainly helpful, and brooding makes for good ideas sometimes. These things are not bad things, children.

But why would I publicly proclaim my “failure” in the form of a rejection from The Cypress Dome? Wouldn't I just be better off keeping it under wraps, or simply saying something like “Well, uh, I was so busy that I forgot the deadline” and that's why you don't see Brent Barnhart's fantastic short fiction in the latest edition of the UCF literary journal?

No. You have to start somewhere, and you have to fail.

Today's topic is rejection.

Stephen King talks about as a teenager accumulating hundreds of rejection slips which he would tack to his wall. Every writing website out there with articles about dealing with rejection will tell you the exact same thing. That is, you will get rejected and you'll never make it as a writer unless you accept this. King ultimately says the same thing, and ultimately he's right.

Over the summer I went on a submitting spree, shooting out short fiction to random online journals and websites. Emphasis on "random." I received a number of rejection e-mails, actually, I was rejected from everywhere I attempted to get published. I was pretty bummed about this, although looking back on it now, it's painfully obvious why I was consistently being rejected.

It wasn't necessarily that my writing wasn't “good” (although I have polished and rewritten a number of the stories which were submitted) but that I wasn't reading the markets. I was, quite literally, shooting out my stories, but they were all shots in the dark. Also, I had this wild notion that I was above revision.

Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing. I was infatuated with the idea that I was a 19-year old writing prodigy that was ready to break onto the scene with his compelling characters and flawless dialogue.

I was so, so wrong.

Yet I managed to learn two very, very specific lessons that pertain to the art of writing as I know it.

Lesson 1: Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never write something to specifically emulate a certain style that you think will get you published.

I did this, once. It was the first and last time.

After receiving my mass of rejections, I was determined to get published. Anyway, anyhow. I found a flash fiction website that accepted stories of 200-words or less. They also had a fairly high rate of publication and were known to get back the author within a day or two with a response. I wrote a piece about a boy who is infatuated with a piece of wood he finds while wandering around his neighborhood after a hurricane. I liked it.

But then I began reading other pieces on the website. They were “edgy.” Lots of cursing, risqué topics, juicy stuff. My story would not fly in the midst of this.

So I wrote a new story. This wasn't a big deal, at 200-words or less there isn't much love lost for the story about the boy and the piece of wood. I instead wrote a story from the perspective a young boy who is dared by his older brother to ride his skateboard down the steepest hill in the neighborhood without a helmet. The younger brother protests, yet the older brother taunts him, telling the youngster that “Helmet's are for faggots. You don't want to be a faggot, do you?” The younger brother goes through with the stunt, which we get no details of. The final lines of the story have the youngster tell the reader that, ironically, he in fact did grow up to be gay, with a “slightly noticeable scar under his right eye and no sense of smell.”

Edgy, right?

There was just one problem.

I didn't actually like the story.

I thought the idea for the story, particularly the ending, was somewhat clever. Yet it wasn't something I was proud of, which is why I didn't post the story here. “My heart wasn't in it” and all that good stuff. More or less, I was prostituting myself in hopes that I'd a snag writing credit as well as get my name immortalized in a Google search.

“Purple Skateboard” was rejected, thank God. The rejection was personalized, and was quite polite, too. The editor said that he liked the idea but my “prose needed some tightening up.” I was relieved, as I didn't want something like that to be credited to my name nor did I want it to be my first publication. It was a miserable feeling, trying to write something to appease an editor. It's probably been the most the worst experience I've had in my brief career (if you want to call it that) as a “writer.”

So yeah, never prostitute your work.

Lesson 2: Despite my rejections, I learned that somebody out there, whether it be a disembodied illusion or crazed editor, actually likes my work.

In the midst of my rejections, I got a few personalized ones. I sort of mentioned this earlier. Stephen King mentions that personalized rejections are your best friends, more or less because you get some sort of insight as how you can improve.

I loved getting personalized rejections. I think I got three out of something like fifteen. The reason I loved them was because it felt like someone was actually reading my work. Most rejections, as I mentioned earlier, are copy-and-pasted from the editor. Basically “thanks for submitting, but we're going to pass.” I got a few that said to submit again, which is encouraging. These sorts of rejection are somewhat in the middle between personalized and generic, and while they still feel somewhat robotic in their approach, the whole “submit again” line usually means that the editor(s) saw some sort of promise in your work.

There was one rejection in particular that was a great deal of help to me. The response was something like a paragraph long, explaining to me what they liked and didn't like. I was quite grateful and utterly surprised that anyone would take the time to let me know exactly what they liked and didn't. Most editors seem like they're too busy to do so, that or they just like to put up that illusion.

The editor basically told me that they couldn't sympathize with the main character of my story. I reread the story to see what he was talking about and realized that my protagonist could easily be mistaken for an antagonist (especially when the character of the actual antagonist is a writer, therefore an editor would be more keen on sympathizing with her). So yeah, I kind of screwed that one up. I've since edited the story and now it makes considerably more sense.

Yet aside from the criticism, I got a compliment. This compliment has stuck with me, and I've gotten a similar compliments from professors, peer editing sessions, and friends alike.

Here's what dear editor had to say:

“I liked all the dialogue very much (you have no idea how many writers simply sum up events without any conversation at all).“

If you want to make my day, don't compliment my glasses or new business card. Compliment my dialogue. Maybe I'm riding my high-horse here, but writing dialogue is probably my favorite part of writing my respective stories and it seems to be everyone's favorite part of reading them. The knowledge that this editor enjoyed my dialogue, despite the rejection, is affirmation that I'm doing something right. Not only that, the editor also implied that I could do something better than other writers could.

The point is, rejection is healthy and in the end I've found it to be motivation in disguise. Try again. Try harder. Do better. You probably can.

And as lame as it sounds, as least I can say I tried. I'm still making my attempts, slowly but surely. You could be the best writer ever, sure, but that amounts to beans if nobody is reading your work.

Either that or I could always take the Salinger approach and lock everything I write in a safety deposit box where it shall remain until my death.

(And if you're reading this J.D. (and I know that you are), you know that I love you. I hope you never die, really. At the same time, I'm one of the many among your legion of fans that wants to get my grubby mitts on the rest of your work. It's a serious love-hate relationship.)

But yeah, rejection. Love it, hate it. Embrace it.