Dealing With Rejection

Any time you go into a profession where your livelihood depends on someone's opinion, you deal with rejection. Actors, models and athletes deal with it on a daily basis, but so do authors, screenwriters and journalists. It's a part of the process that no one likes to talk about, and no one likes to deal with.

It's hard to put your heart and soul into a piece of writing. To create characters that you fall in love with and build a world for them from your imagination. It's really hard when you really love what you've created and you think it's good, even great. It renews your soul when your get feebdack from beta readers praising it (especially when they don't owe you anything and don't even know who you are). When you hear from mulitple people that it's wonderful, they loved it and they would buy it in a heartbeat, that's the greatest thing a writer can hear. Then, with your spirits high, you submit it with hopeful anticipation.

Time passes, and more time. Then you get the answer to your query and/or submission...and it's a rejection. Those words can crush your soul and make you wonder why you do this in the first place. The first one is the easiest to deal with because you think 'hey, someone else will LOVE this as much as I do and my readers do'. Then you get a second, a third, a twentieth rejection and you question everything you've ever written. You wonder if you're really horrible and people were being nice to spare your feelings (and being Canadian with Canadian beta readers that thought has crossed my mind plenty of times). You wonder why the hell you put yourself through this and what the hell you're doing with your life.

I was very lucky someone took a chance on my first novel, and I'm getting a second one published (happy dance), but now I'm trying to break into other genres (historical romance and contemporary erotic romance) and the rejections keep flowing in as fast as I can submit my books. It beats you down and it's made me question everything from my talent at writing to my decision to keep plugging away at it. I'm hopeful I'll be able to write under multiple names and in multiple genres. I have so many stories in my head and so many characters that I want to share with the world. Every day I wonder why I do this to myself, and then I remember that I'm a writer. Even if I never publish another book or break into another genre, I'm still a writer because I write.

No one can ever take that away from me. Just like no one can ever take away your status as a writer. You may never be an author, but as long as you continue to write you'll always be a writer.