REJECTION: An Itch of Writing Guide

It's a fact of the writing life, but it can feel like death.

There isn’t a writer in the world who hasn’t had work rejected. It hurts. But how can you cope with prospect of rejection and get your work out there nonetheless? How do you feel the fear, do it anyway, and even flourish and grow, after someone has said ‘No’.?

• Every writer has experienced at least one rejection that feels simultaneously like stab to the heart, and a door slammed so hard in their face that it breaks their nose.

• Every writer has experienced at least one rejection which just proves that some gates are kept by guards named Ignorance, Illiteracy, Arrogance and Cluelessness - but just because we despise them doesn’t mean they don’t block the gate very effectively.

• And every writer has, at least once, seriously contemplated throwing in the writing towel for good.

So how do we cope? As so often, the Royal Literary Fund website is a goldmine for fellow-feeling and thought-provoking explorations of the writing life. There’s a delicious collection of short podcasts by authors on rejection and in the articles, editor and writer James Maconochie gives helpful context about saying No to writers, while

Katherine Clements

has a toolkit about cultivating resilience.

Let’s explore how you get yourself to go on writing, and sending work out, when you know it might very well be rejected. How do you cope with rejections when they arrive - as they will, even if only as death-by-email silence? How do you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again? Could you even - once the pain is gone - benefit from a rejection?