Rejection. This is what an aspiring writer usually gets as soon as he starts to query. Being rejected hurts you; it suddenly slaps your face; it sometimes blocks you from going on your path and doing what you really want to do.
It’s devastating. You’ve worked on your story for days, weeks, and months. You did your research as thoroughly as possible to create your world. Quite often research and writing processes go along, intimately hand in hand. It’s stressing, difficult and tiring, but you do it. It’s your dream. Finally, the first draft is complete. You feel relieved. Now it’s time for editing. It’s the most complicated part. You have to consider grammar, consistency, and coherence of what you wrote down on paper (or Word file). It’s a long work, but it must be done. It takes time, and it may consume all your energy and patience even more than the creative process. You live again your story, your characters and the situations you created. When you’ve done, you can start sending out your book. Beta readers are your first resource. You receive good and bad comments; helpful and less useful ideas; you have to deal with enthusiastic readers or bored readers. Although receiving harsh comment may be tough, whoever does it usually does it honestly. You have to improve what you wrote, and you don’t want friendly good reviews saying “it’s good, I love it” for the purpose of making you happy. You want to know what people actually think of it. Good and bad thoughts. Once you’ve done the improvement, you may want a second round of beta readers. You desire to see if your work has improved or still need some efforts. Editing appeared again on your way. You need to thoroughly polish your story and get rid of eventual mistakes and typos. Editing becomes your best friend and worse nightmare. At the end, your writing is ready. You can be more or less satisfied, but it’s ready for submission to agents and publishers. The first rejection is the most predictable. You might have foreseen it. You’re new to this world. Nobody has ever heard of your name. What you have to do is to try over and over again. It’s not easy, but if you don’t carry on querying, you won’t find the perfect lover of your book. Bear in mind that, if the first rejection was predictable, it won’t be the last one. The second will come to you. Maybe, the third and, suddenly, the tenth. Inevitably, it hurts your feeling. You start thinking you’re not good enough. You start pondering if you choose the right path. You also start regretting the time you wasted – yes, ‘wasted’, at a certain point, you think that you’ve uselessly sat for hours typing senseless words on the keyboard. The thought that greatest authors, too, were rejected and struggled to get published partly soothes your disappointment. Arthur Conan Doyle struggle to publish Sherlock Holmes’s first novel; at the beginning of his career, Stephen King struggled to find a publisher; Ben Aaronovitch had recently posted on Twitter that he was rejected sixteen times before finding an agent. I haven’t published my works yet (I’m working on it) and I frequently have been rejected. As these authors teach us, resilience is the fundamental characteristic to become a writer. Rejection has a very bitter taste and remorselessly devastates you, but it’s necessary. It forges your attitude. It helps you to understand what you may improve. It makes you focus as scrupulously and stubbornly as possible on your goal. With its harshness, it motivates you. It pushes you to your limits. I often feel demoralised and discouraged, but I go on writing and reading; learning and improving. I work harder and harder to get what I desire. Being rejected is part of the game, I’ve accepted that. As in every game, you sometimes win, and you sometimes lose. Reading and writing, writing and reading, learning and improving are the only options we have to get, one day, our efforts awarded. Giving up and regret are not sensible options to consider in this game. Note: If you are looking for motivation or simply opinions about rejection, I suggest reading this interesting article (LINK) published on This comma website.
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