On Rejection and Shame

Despite all the great gifts that can come with sharing your work, rejection is always riding along in the sidecar. Facing rejection is a skill that most writers (the ones who persist) learn early. We learn about rejection when we first produce a piece and ask for feedback. When our ideas get reshaped by comments from fellow writers or other readers.

A kind of death, isn’t it. Valuable in the long run but often shame-producing in the moment.

Of course we all know that learning to gracefully receive feedback (the rejection of “This doesn’t quite work” or “I was confused”) is a necessary skill. It’s born of practice and time. Eventually, we may feel inured to rejection in feedback. We move on to bigger risks—like publishing!

One skill that’s not taught in MFA programs or writing classes is this: how do we deal with the emotions that come up when we get rejected? What do writers who seem to skate past the shame and shut-down have in their psychological toolbox?

This week, I had a not-so-fun experience with rejection, which came out of the blue. I thought I’d share it and also the technique I used to move past it.

Reviews

My rejection came in the form of an online review for one of my books. I’ve practiced caution and common sense about reviews for decades, since I began publishing. You cannot control people’s response to what you put out in the world. Even if you have stellar endorsements, there are still some folks who get a tickle out of posting nasty stuff.

But after fifteen books out in the world, I’ve learned to take all reviews with a grain of salt.

I tell myself they are not personal, they reflect the reader’s tastes. If one of those wingnut reviewers happens upon my book listing and decides to comment, I try to treat it as a joke. (I’m not talking about sincere, critical reviews, which can be valuable and something to learn from. These are just those folks who seem to cruise the internet looking for something to slam.)

And I also practice not reading my reviews very often, if at all, after the book is out for a while. This not only preserves my sanity; it helps keep me working forward.

But every now and then a little devil gets on my shoulder and I’m tempted to scroll to the Goodreads or BookBub or Amazon pages of my different books and see what’s been happening in the reviews.

The big ouch

I came across a review by a woman whose name I didn’t recognize. Not a surprise in itself. She had read one of my recent novels. The story didn’t appeal to her tastes. Also, fine—nobody’s writing appeals to every reader.

What hit me hard was her decision to get personal. Beyond her comments about the book, she told the brief story of our relationship back in the 80s. I was married to her ex’s son and she talked all about that time.

Here we were, on a public book-review forum. Why in the world did she feel compelled to share such inappropriate and unnecessary information? At first, I was outraged enough to search for her name online—and I found it—and think of scathing responses. I tried hard to remember her from those younger days and put her comments in context. Had I offended her back then, in a way she couldn’t forget? What was the story here?

I realized I’d never know—and I didn’t want to make the ouch any more personal. I needed to deal with the shame of whatever I’d done or said, unknowingly, all those decades ago, and get back my sense of who I was now.

Shame technique

Shame is such an insidious thing. If you want to read an expert on the topic, check out Brene Brown’s books—I especially love this article she wrote on shame versus guilt. She says that shame is an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”

So what to do about it? I knew I was far from unworthy of love and belonging, with my creative work or my life in general. But shame floods us and convinces us otherwise.

I remembered a very successful technique I’d used in the past. It comes from surgeon David Hanscom, M.D., who works with chronic pain suffers. Hanscom wrote Back in Control to document the non-surgical steps he uses to help patients. One of his theories is that emotions and thoughts create a large percentage of the pain we experience.

The technique couldn’t be simpler. You write out whatever is on your mind, stream of consciousness, however you wish. It can be short or long.

But here’s the kicker: immediately after writing, you crumple up the page and throw it away.

So I tried it. I wrote how humiliated I felt, how angry I was, how confused about my youth and this person I couldn’t remember at all and why she’d post that review. I wrote about a page and a half. Then I crumpled up the page and tossed it across the room.

It’s tempting to reread. But the trick, the reason this technique works, is that you don’t.

Hanscom’s theory is that the technique, along with others described in his book, allows a person to separate from the story.

It sure worked for me. An hour later, maybe less, I felt zero anguish about this. In fact, I couldn’t even remember why I was so upset.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

If there’s something needling at you, concerning your creativity, your writing life, publishing, your worth as a writer, try Hanscom’s exercise.

How do you deal with shame in your writing life?

How might you change that?

What results did you have, if you tried the exercise?