Do You Have The "Write" Stuff?

Monday, March 21, 2011
Good morning Literary World!

I hope everyone had a fantabulous weekend and is ready to kick their week off with a bang!

Today we're going to talk about rejection and how to deal with it.

Listen, we have to face the fact that there are billions of people in the world with billions of different personalities. Not everybody is going to like your work. And if you write fiction, it's subjective. One person may love what you've written while another one might not.

We all get the rejection blues. Every writer at some point in their career has received their fair share of rejection letters.

So here are some tips on handling rejection.

1. If you, for any reason receive a rejection letter, do not email the person who sent it, and harass them. I get it. You've slaved over your piece, you think it's perfect, and it may be --- but there may be other reasons why it was rejected. You don't want to damage the relationship with the publishing professional in case you want to submit to them in the future.

2. Chalk it up as experience. That's a line my mother always tells me. So maybe you didn't get where you wanted to be with your first novel. Move on to the next one. That's the beauty of being a writer. Our minds are a creative canvas. I know you have more than one stellar book brewing in that little brain of yours.

3. Don't give up. I'll admit, getting rejection after rejection can seem daunting and depressing. But I can't stress self- belief and perservearance enough. (I know. I talk about it a lot.)But its true.

I hope some of this helps!

Cheers!

5 comments:

  1. Legacy said...:

    This is helpful Lauren, Thankyou

  1. Anonymous said...:

    Great advice, Lauren. Rejection is never easy.

  1. Unknown said...:

    Writing, reading it's all subjective. An agent may reject you, as your MS is similar to one they just signed, only you don't know that. Taking it personally is silly.
    As for a bad review...we need to suck it up, we didn't write for the whole world. we write for a specific audience, who all have personal tastes. BUT don't ruin an authors good name in the process. That's unnecessary.

    I don't think you can stress enough-belief and perseverance.

  1. Katrina said...:

    IMHO, stressing over a rejection just weakens your writing. I have to say, it takes me about two days to get over the depression of a rejection. During that time, I read. I read, and re-inspire myself. Then, I write. And I try to submit some more.

    Thanks for the advice! I needed some of that. Thanks for that.

  1. Great tips. When we approach writing as a career, Tip #2 is absolute truth. We have to have more than one stellar book brewing or risk being a one-hit-wonder.

    And we can never, ever give up.

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