Handling Rejection

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If you have ever submitted something for publication and received a rejection letter, you know the sinking feeling it can bring over you. For some it is a moment of slight disappointment and for others, it is the final plunge of a knife into their dream.

I believe there are three different ways you can react to a rejection letter. One is to dismiss them, not even give them a second thought.

In fact, you might not even keep them. They could end up in your garbage bin, with no ability to impact the next word you write.

Another way to react, which is the way I handle rejection letters, is to keep them and use them as motivation. For every no I have received, it seemed to instill a fire in me to keep going.

Sometimes I would pull them back out and read the comments. Even if I wasn’t offered something constructive that I could learn from, it helped me to realize that either they weren’t the right fit or I needed to make some changes to my piece.

Now with both of these ways, the one who is rejected learns to move on. But there is a third way to handle it, which results in giving up.

The person who gives up may or may not keep their rejection letters. Whether they are ripped into shreds or filed into a folder, these letters manage to be the force that drives the writer to lay down their dream.

Nothing is ever learned from this. And the gift that the world may have been waiting for is no longer.

How do you tend to handle rejection?

© 2012, Stephanie Romero

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