First Sunday Q&A: A Different Way to Move through Rejection and Discouragement
Q: I’ve been writing for years, I’ve been published too. But my ability to handle the more difficult aspects of writing and publishing isn’t getting stronger, as you’d expect. In fact, I find myself more sensitive to rejection than ever. I also have trouble with moving through stuck places in my writing. For instance, if I’m trying a new skill and I just hate what I’m coming up with.
What are some tips or ways you’ve used to move through slack periods and discouragement?
I’m reminded of years ago, early in my food career, when I was hired to open and run a new restaurant in Southern California. My work involved ridiculously long hours, I always smelled of garlic, and I had trouble sleeping because of the upside down schedule that a dinner-only restaurant requires. Friends thought I had the most romantic job in the world because I loved food and I worked with a team of talented cooks.
I had to laugh. Each time someone said to me, “I’ve always wanted to open a restaurant,” I wanted to bust their sentimental bubble with the real truth.
I feel the same way whenever someone says, “I’ve always wanted to write a book.”
It’s creative, yes. It can be a lovely experience when it’s going well. But most of you who are reading this also know it’s terrifically hard work. And rejection and discouragement are part and parcel.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. You’ve probably heard that one too. I sweated a lot in that restaurant kitchen, at a hot stove for hours, working as fast as I could to churn out the meals.
Same with the writing life. I metaphorically stand at a hot stove and the heat can feel unbearable at times.
So why do it?
Because we have to. Nothing beats the creative flight of making a piece of writing work. Rejection and discouragement are small compared to that.
In my recent workshop at the Loft Literary Center, “Writing and Risk: Aligning Your Writing with Your Life,” we discussed the levels of risk inherent in each stage of the writing process. Each stage develops a certain level of stamina for handling the heat of the writing life, the rejection and discouragement. One reason why I honor all the stages, why I feel strongly that we must spend enough time in each to strengthen our muscles.
It’s foolish to expect that we wouldn’t encounter rejection and disappointment, and also that—like my student with the very good question above—it can get harder as we go forward. A rejection from a small literary journal for an essay you submitted might be taken in stride, while a bad review from a respected trade pub when you’re promoting your book hurts more and longer. But the idea is that by the time you reach out to trade pubs for your soon-to-be-published book, you’ve strengthened your rejection muscles consciously, through writing practice and learning how to take feedback. You can handle more disappointments with balance and just move on to the next risk.
My three stages of writing and their risk are good markers. I’ll share them with you so you might be able to (1) see where you are in the continuum and (2) strengthen the appropriate “risk” muscle to better handle rejection.
Stage 1: Create for yourself, in a vacuum of sorts—the innocent and glorious shitty first draft stage (per Anne Lamott)
Tools: foundational tools (desire to express, a writing practice, creative place, privacy, time)
Risk: being a beginner, open to learning, ability to maintain a practice, to ask for space and time, negotiating the inner “gatekeeper” agreement that allows you to work unimpeded
Stage 2: Move into a wider circle of response from close readers, improve skills/alignment
Tools: inner tools (trust, willingness to look deeper into self and beliefs, willingness to hold opposites at same time) and outer tools (ability to write complexity)
Risk: looking at past beliefs/wounds with detachment, willingness to receive feedback and not be perfect, ability to use feedback
Stage 3: Polish to share with the world, sharing yourself as well
Tools: awareness of key messages (something I learned during my book launch and explored in recent newsletters), enough stamina to be vulnerable and risk
Risk: can you upgrade yourself/writing, do you know why you’re writing this and how it’s part of your life, can you share that life—the person behind the writing?
In my class I asked each person to evaluate the different levels of risk. To grade them from 1 to 10, with 10 being “shake in the boots” risk. It’s different for each person. At which stage do you encounter the most risk, right now?
When you are aware of the risk involved, and your ability to face it, you can go down one level to prepare yourself and build stamina, then take the more riskier steps of the next stage with strength and consciousness. You’re not as easily blindsided. Result: You don’t take the rejection as something wrong with you, personally.
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
What about those who are risk adverse? We are all there, at times. We try to stay satisfied with just creating for ourselves, or not care what others think of our work, or make the work itself too all-consuming to bring others into our creating.
It works for a while. But eventually, most of us need mirrors to grow. We need a writing community to reflect back the quality of our writing, where it can improve, where our communication hits home. A mirror helps us see what we’ve done and where to go next.
The innocence of staying safe in a bubble sans feedback is beautiful. I intentionally create this bubble for myself when I am in the early stages of a new project. It’s the only way I give myself the freedom to create without limits, without reality checks. I want to keep writing as unfettered and “pure” (in the sense that no one else’s opinion helps shape it) as possible.
But there always comes a time when I long for that mirror to show me what I’ve made. I don’t want to fool myself about the writing’s ability to communicate what I really am trying to say.
Enter rejection and accompanying discouragement.
What is rejection, actually? To me, it’s simply hearing that your work isn’t working the way you thought it was. It holds up a mirror to those parts, and we see them in stark reality. Suddenly, the bubble bursts and risk enters. Will we take the rejection to heart—meaning, make it about us, rather than the writing? All too easy to do, no matter your experience.
Rejection’s mirror raises the bar, steepens the learning curve. It’s a gateway to improvement, as long as it stays specific to the writing.
The worst, and most harmful, rejection is non specific. When a writer hears, “I don’t get this” or “This doesn’t work for me” or “I really couldn’t get into this story,” there’s nothing to use from the rejection. It’s all to easy to translate it into the writer’s personal world, their innate creativity, all their writing. This doesn’t work, so that must mean nothing works. Don’t laugh—we’ve all been there.
Specific rejection talks about where the story engagement failed for the reader, as George Saunders so beautifully explains it. That doesn’t collapse our confidence.
So what’s a writer to do with the rejection that diminishes rather than builds?
Several things come to mind:
Become selective about your sources—choose feedback from those who can be specific.
Educate your sources—ask for specificity.
Build your stamina for rejection—don’t attempt a risk level higher than your ability.
I see the third point over and over in students who try for the cream agents when they are just starting to query. They fly on hope, and often they crash when the first no-thank-you’s come back or there’s radio silence after their submission. It’s unreal to expect your heart and mind to handle a rejection that you haven’t built stamina for. Yes, there are miracle acceptances, but the odds are high and do you have the ability to stay the course when you don’t make them?
It’s similar to the smaller rejection that comes from feedback in a writer’s community when you haven’t set yourself up for what you actually need. (See points 1 and 2 above.) In some controlled situations, like classes with skilled instructors, they’ll help you balance your risk and your hope. But often with writing groups and writing partners, nobody can do that but you.
We still need creative risk, we still need community. But it’s self-indulgent to expect the best without preparing for the worst.
These kinds of rejection are controllable, to some extent, so why do writers reach past their risk abilities and set themselves up to fail? We’ve all done it. Have you? What did you learn?
Photo by Darla Hueske on Unsplash
After such an experience, there’s a fallow field, a dry period, often. The writer’s sense of their own writing ability turns fragile and easily pierced. How do you know? You stop writing. You judge your work as less good. Your envy of other writers slowly skyrockets. You put yourself in harm’s way on social media, working the doomscroll until you are convinced your creative life is worthless.
I’ve gathered a few recovery methods, because it happens to me and it probably has happened to you.
Evaluate where the feedback is coming from, if it’s trustworthy, if it has an agenda.
Ask yourself if you were ready to hear feedback—did you have enough detachment from the work?
Did you give away your ownership?
Consider how you asked for the feedback. Guiding with appropriate questions often gives you the kind of answers you really need. (See those earlier points 1 and 2.)
Say you’ve slid down into a pit of discouragement, even though you did all the right things in how you asked for and prepared yourself for feedback. How do you get back up then?
My writing friend was talking about a particular skill she was trying to practice on a new story. It was something she’d taken a class to learn and she knew it was her next skill step in becoming a better writer. She was delighted with the instructor, the class, the energy she got from exploring this new ability. But she found herself avoiding her writing each day, for longer periods, until it was hard to actually remember why she was even writing this story.
She asked if I’d ever run into this in my own writing and (trying not to roll my eyes—of course!!) I shared that it was a regular experience.
Did I keep pushing forward? she asked. Slog through? Or was there a better way?
A different approach when this happens is not to push through but to back off. I know so well how to push through obstacles. It’s one of my major skills, which some might call being stubborn or persevering. But over time, it wears me down.
Instead, I have learned to pause and give the writing peripheral attention by changing the subject and by increasing the amount of love I have for it.
Imagine a fight with a spouse or partner or kid you adore. For that time, it’s hard to remember why you ever felt the love. So you back off, perhaps, and you take time away, and you begin to remember. Changing the subject is never easy for me—remember my stubborn tendency to push through walls. But it usually helps in these bleaker moments.
My goal is twofold:
Try to remember why I love this particular piece of writing .
Try to remember why I need to learn this new thing.
Love of our creativity and how deeply it feeds us is all that will pull us through, when we are flattened by discouragement and it leaks into our overall belief about ourselves as creative people.
A tip: Start with something small that you love easily. Move from that into loving someone or something you can give to. My dogs often qualify. My garden. Nature in general. Good food. Wonderful poetry.
Those are my ideas. Now I’d love to hear yours. What do you do, to overcome discouragement? What’s the worst rejection you’ve experienced as a writer and how did you recover? What kinds of risk are you comfortable with, creatively? What do you avoid?
My goal with these First Sunday newsletters is to create a personal, private space, free of trolling, open to all ideas, where we can discuss our questions and concerns about the writing practice we all try to maintain.