Hi Claire, You are one of my favourite writers, and I admire you so much. I am currently querying my first novel & I just got my first rejection on a full request. I feel so awful - I've cried and I almost feel like I've broken up with a boyfriend! Do you have any tips on coping with rejection/ the query process? xxx
First of all, you are the sweetest. Iâm giving you hugs through the internet right now. *hugs*Â
Can you feel the love yet? *HUGS*Â
Second of allâŚman. Getting rejected sucks. Thereâs no use pretending otherwise. Whether itâs a romantic break-up, or someone rejecting your full manuscript, or, maybe, like, you spend a lot of time trying to cook a nice healthy meal for dinner but you end up burning the crap out of it so itâs like the FOOD and the UNIVERSE ITSELF have rejected you, and you end up ordering Dominoâs and letting the ruined food just kind of curdle in the sink while you grieve. (Not that I have done this.)
Iâm really sorry you got a rejection. I know how much that stings. But look at it this way: You got a full request! Youâre out there querying! Youâve written a book! These are all huge accomplishments, and just because you got a rejection doesnât diminish any of them. Thatâs so important to remember. The road to publication (and the road after publication, aka, the road to hopefully selling more books than just the one so you can pay your bills and order Dominoâs now and then) is a long and challenging one. You have to celebrate every victory, however small.
But that may not help you feel any better at the moment, I know. So in case youâre craving some good old-fashioned commiseration, let me just say I have totally been there. All writersâpublished and not-yet-publishedâhave been there, and will be there again.Â
When I was querying my first novel, wayyyy back in 2009, I got like seventy-something rejections. I kid you not. And I was so excited when I got my first one because it made me feel legit. I called my parents like, âOMG YOU GUYS I GOT MY FIRST REJECTIONâ and they didnât quite know how to respond to my enthusiasm: âUmâŚthatâs great, honey? I? âŚGuess? You know what ârejectionâ meansâŚright?â
For a while I printed out my rejections and kept them in a box on my desk because they were like battle scars. I wanted to be able to show that I had paid my dues, you know, someday in the near future when I became a mega bestseller. (Yeah, I had ridiculously high hopes.)Â
Eventually I stopped printing them out because there were just too darn many of them. And it got depressing.
But I still have those sixty-or-seventy-however-many rejections I printed out, and I bring them to each school and library I visit. I ask the kids to guess what this big stack of paper is. âA first draft!â they guess. âYour first book!âÂ
Oh, bless their innocent hearts.Â
Then I tell them, âYeah, no, those are good guesses BUT IN FACT these are all the people who thought my book wasnât good enough. And they were RIGHT.â
This blows their minds. âWHAT?â they say. âWHAT?! somanyrejections doesnotcompute howareyoustillaliveâ
And I tell them I survived those rejections and kept going because I love writing. Plain and simple. I love writing, and I think I have fun/beautiful/important/weird stories to tell, and Iâm not sure that the precious, awkward, unique mess of a creature that I am would be able to do another job as well as this one.Â
So when I got rejections I would cry and feel like complete crap, and shut my computer and go marathon Friends on DVD (DVD bingeing! before the age of Netflix! OH WHAT A WORLD) and declare I was off writing for good. FOREVER.
But of course that wasnât true. I had my tantrum and pity party, and then I woke up the next day, took a deep breath, and got back to work.
Then I met my now-agent, and she requested my full manuscript and read it, and liked it, and we met at a conference, and she talked to me for like three hoursâŚabout why she wasnât going to sign me yet. Because the book needed lots of work, and I needed to grow as a writer. And then she proceeded to list all the things I needed to work on, and all the elements of my book that werenât working.
I mean, as rejections go, this was pretty major. First of all, it was IN PERSON. Second of all, she had read my book and had obviously spent a lot of time thinking about it, and STILL it wasnât good enough.
I went home that night and did the whole crying forever, stuffing my face with ice cream, snuggling on the couch with my mom thing, which is usually only something you do when you, like you said, break up with someone.Â
I cried and I grieved and I had a bit of a meltdown, and then I woke up the next day, took a deep breath, and got back to work.
(I also had to write a twenty-page paper for grad school the next day, because Iâd been so obsessed with meeting my now-agent at this conference that I put off everything else. So I ended up writing this paper in one day while my eyes were swollen and my head was stuffy from crying the night before. DONâT DO THIS, KIDS. IT ISNâT FUN.)
And you know what? The rejections didnât end there.
Since becoming a published author, Iâve pitched projects to my agent and to editors that have gone absolutely nowhere. The timing wasnât good, or the market wasnât looking for a project like that, or I really really loved the project at first and then fell out of love with it, and everyone could tell.Â
No matter the reason, itâs always hard to set aside a project youâve poured time and passion into. Especially when youâve already got books out there, and that pesky little sly voice in your head is whispering, âBut what if thatâs all you can do? What if you donât have any more books inside you?â
When these rejections happened (so many kinds of rejections out there, so little time), I cried and grieved and spent a week watching Netflix instead of working (ah! weâve reached the point in this little chronology when Netflix enters our lives like a bejeweled goddess emerging from a stormy sea!). There was definitely probably Dominoâs involved.Â
(Dominoâs pizza is the best pizza, and nothing will convince me otherwise.)
Then, once that was done, I woke up the next day, took a deep breath, and got back to work.
Iâm sure youâre seeing a pattern here. (Besides the Dominoâs thing.)
As a writer, you will constantly face rejection. Just like you will as a human being. But just because the possibility of rejection exists doesnât mean you deny yourself relationships and love and connections with other humans.Â
Likewise, just because you could send out a query and get a rejection, or submit a manuscript and get a rejection, or publish a book (!) and still get rejections (!!!)âŚthat doesnât mean you stop writing. Not if you love it, not if you crave it, not if words speak to you straight down to your bones.Â
Instead, you cry and you grieve.Â
You have a tantrum and throw a pity party (and try to keep that part off social media, which I KNOW is hard, but trust me, itâs better for everyone, especially YOU).Â
You snuggle your pets and your significant other and your friends and your family.Â
You watch movies and TV shows and read books that make you feel better. (Maybe you donât want to read books when youâve gotten a rejection and are feeling low. Maybe the mere sight of a STUPID STUPID BOOK makes you want to tear your hair out. That is perfectly okay. You are allowed to take a hiatus from reading for the sake of your mental health.)Â
You go out into the world and experience life and rediscover that spark that got you writing in the first place. You realize you can do this. (I know you can, anon, and any other discouraged souls reading this post. After all, published writers are just non-published writers who kept working and learning and growing, and never gave up.)
You think about these things, and then, once the initial sting of rejection has passed, you wake up the next day, take a deep breath, and get back to work.
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