Here is one of my favorite stories about rejection.
Several years ago when A. Manette Ansay was teaching creative writing at Vanderbilt University she decided to give her students a visual demonstration about what being a writer meant.
Before class, Ansay pulled out her file of rejections. It was thick. (Nearly every writer I know keeps a similar portfolio. Surely this deliberate stockpiling of pain and failure reveals something about the writer’s psyche – why don’t we just toss them?)
With rejection letters in hand, Ansay sat in her office and constructed a dress, cobbling it together with staples. When the garment was finished, there was still a stack of correspondence on her desk, so she made a hat, complete with feather. In this costume, she greeted the class.
“I stood in front of the room in this dress made of my rejections,” she says, “and I told them, ‘This is what being a writer looks like.’” Blank faces stared back at her. Ansay recalls, “I would see by their expressions they were thinking, ‘Well, you must not be a very good writer.’”
Ansay, whose most recent novel is “Midnight Champagne,” is a terrific writer. She has received the Pushcart Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award and the Friends of American Writers Award. Her collection of short stories, four novels and memoir have garnered critical praise. She is an Oprah author. And she is right. Being a writer means rejection.
After class, Ansay returned to her office and pulled off the dress, badly scratching herself with the staples in the process. “I was bleeding from my rejections,” she says.
Don’t we all?
Rejection is the beast with yellow teeth waiting in the closet. It is every denial we have ever experienced, every moment of self-doubt, magnified 10,000 fold. It’s the fifth grade teacher who humiliated us in front of the class. It’s our worst fear – You’re a fake who has been found out – in a form letter. Rejection humbles us and erodes self-confidence. And every time we sit down to write we risk it.
We deal with it differently. Depending on the moment and our temperament, we react with anger, bitterness, humor, rationalization or resignation. We remind ourselves not to take it personally. We take it very personally. Some of us assume the fetal position and consider bartending as a serious career option. Others of us dream about getting out hands on an Uzi. Any jury of our peers would acquit. Justifiable Homicide. Temporary Insanity.
A writer I know struck out the name of her publisher on copies of one of her novels and scribbled in “Scumbag Press” after the house rejected her next book.
Whatever works.
In the face of rejection, we gather stories like talismans, passing them between us like 50-dollar bills. Stories about 20 editors who pass on a manuscript that, finally published, becomes a best seller (“Ordinary People,” “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” The Firm”). Stories about an author so defeated he commits suicide, but whose work, submitted posthumously by his mother to yet another house, lands on the best seller list, wins awards (“Confederacy of Dunces”). We review the early rejections of Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck. We talk about the insanity of the publishing business and speak in awe-filled voices about the saga of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” One hundred and twenty-one publishers said no thanks before one editor saw merit in Robert M. Pirsig’s manuscript, a book which eventually sold millions of copies. We savor Pirsig’s sweet revenge as if it were our own. We try to imagine addressing the 122nd envelope, sticking the postage stamps on, shipping it. We ask ourselves sobering questions. Would I have quit after the first 20 rejections? Fifty? Seventy? One hundred? How militant is my belief in my work? Will I continue if all incoming evidence suggests I am engaged in an act of supreme self-delusion?
Faced with rejection, we recite these stories like litanies. We gain comfort – and fortitude – from them. We sho ut. Cry. Whine. Sneer at the obtuseness of editors.
Here is the totality of what I know about rejection. When I am done reacting, I must return to the work. Like all life challenges, rejection is simply a test of my mettle. It offers two options. Give up or continue. So, I continue.
Unbowed and only slightly bitter, I stumble on. Or march on defiantly. Or crawl on all fours. Or make a furious dash for the finish. I establish working relationships with other writers so I don’t have to deal with rejection in isolation. I learn to celebrate small triumphs. I develop a thicker dermis.
It serves me, too, to sheath myself in steadfast faith, to hold fast to the understanding that there is a purpose in what happens, even in rejection. I recall the words of a karate master that “every defeat holds the seeds of future victories.” I extend that faith to surround my whole life, knowing that even when the news looks bleak, it’s a building block to something else. I remind myself to follow the compass of my own true inner impulse.
And I write.