Recommendation vs. Reality – How To Deal With Rejection

1. DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY
2. TALK ABOUT IT
3. CELEBRATE IT
4. LEARN FROM IT
5. PICK YOURSELF UP

There are all these amazing lists of recommendations on how to deal with rejection. Of course, I’m not saying they’re bad! More the opposite. We writers should read them, internalize the help and support other writers and psychologists are giving us! We should be grateful to know who we can turn to when we need comfort and what to do with the given advice. I’m serious, and there is no sarcasm in my words!

Take the list above. Each one of the points has a foot long explanation online, and every word is supportive and well meant. If any writer asked me how I’d deal with rejection, I would most likely use exactly that particular list and give calm and well-considered explanations with each advice.

But let me be honest: what is my reality? What are first and true emotional reactions on rejection? – This:

What are my honest (AND SECRET!!) replies to the recommendations mentioned above?

Don’t take it personally, right now it’s just not a good match – yeah, good match my ass. These guys don’t see my knowledge, my talent, my abilities or my potential. They’re BLIND!

Talk about it – go to your shrink and tell him that you are suffering, because rejection hurts! And then get a triple-box of Xanax and a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Celebrate it – the rejection gives you a chance to improve your writing!  Of course! We got nothing better to do than to sacrifice a bottle of champagne to someone who’s hurt, stabbed – KILLED us!

Learn from it. Yes, we will, since we can show we can learn and deal with all this. – Forget that crap – I learned my craft, and I know what I’m doing – and no teenager barely out of high school is telling me what I’m doing wrong.

Pick yourself up – yes, because it’s easy to continue submitting. We are convinced there’s a great match somewhere. – Of course, after we found the light swimming in the lake of our tears and after we have nearly drowned in self-pity, we might consider submitting again. In like – two, three years, maybe?

I admit I’m curious… am I the only one who doesn’t take rejection well? Yes, I know, I’m an adult, I should stay calm, I should use my brain and my ability to accept constructive criticism. But I don’t. I’m acting like a kindergarten kid. My face, my brain, my knowledge, my experience tell the other person: “Yes, you’re right, thank you for the advice, it will give me a chance to improve.” But my emotions, my really, really enraged heart screams: “You prove me – and prove me a hundred times more you can do it any better before you DARE rejecting my work and therefore hurting, criticizing, insulting and humiliating me.”

Really, with all my life experience, all my rationality and common sense sometimes I’m such a wimp.