Taking the Reins Back: Reframing Rejection
By Diann Leo-Omine, written September 2023
The sun is up, and I’m up doomscrolling. I catch the concise subject line of the morning’s first email: “(Publication title) Decline.” It’s a simple form letter rejection. I nearly burn myself with my coffee, and I can’t discern whether the hot coffee stings more than the rejection itself.
Conventional wisdom advises “to get back on the horse” right away. ChatGPT suggests the phrase involves reapproaching “a difficult or challenging situation with renewed determination and optimism.”*
Don’t take it personally.
Importantly, DON’T RUMINATE.
I scrawl “good enough” in my notebook. The gravity of those words weighs on me. I lean into writing about the thing I most want to avoid, a technique gleaned during my Tin House workshop with Cyrus Dunham.
To ruminate is to deeply reflect.
Good enough good enough good.
To ruminate is perceived as negative.
Rejection triggers competition. Well, so-and-so was able to get into this publication, or that workshop, or a residency. Then, why am I not good enough?
What if:
instead of hopping back on the horse right away . . .
I catch myself, like tripping on upturned cement. I name what’s happening. I know in my mind this is scarcity mentality, the concept that “everyone exists along a spectrum of competition instead of collaboration.”**
What if:
I sit for a second, to listen?
I analyze where the news of this rejection lives in my body. It strikes me in the solar plexus and the belly. I feel sadness in the key of grief. Underneath sadness festers fear. Digging deeper, the question gnaws at me, why do I write anyway? I don’t have to write.
To ruminate can refer to the ruminants.
Maybe my writing just isn’t good, good enough?
Ruminants are creatures, such as goats, that munch on partially chewed food.
I tune in to The Write Attention podcast, whose fourth episode focuses on rejection and failure. Fourteen minutes into the episode, cohost Jeannetta Craigwell-Graham suggests that rejection can be an indication to shift focus elsewhere. This resonates, as my shoulders are still tingling, a sensation I name as frustration. I click the stop button on the episode, for now.
To ruminate is colloquially “chewing the cud.”
Good is following the rules.
When my grandmother was alive, in the limited village dialect of hers I could understand, she would always ask if I had been “good.”
Good enough enough good good.
Horses are hindgut fermenters, nonruminants; goats are foregut fermenters, ruminants.
Rejection spurs past memories of times I was not “good enough.” Maybe I sit too close to that fire, remembering: the dream college with the amber fall leaves and the renowned creative writing program; the summer internship in New York I was deemed too “West Coast” for; the love interest who left me at the transit station to trace the tangle of blue and green and yellow bus lines back to Portland.
Horses don’t ruminate.
I remember how sad I felt then, even as years pass into decades. Yet through fire, the leaves crunch, the sticky July air dissipates, the lines on the bus map crumple.
To ruminate is “room.”
Rejection triggers scarcity, I name it in its tracks, again. There is not enough room for everyone, so I have to be good. And it’s hard not to think about scarcity in publishing, an industry as a whole that tokenizes marginalized writers.
To ruminate is “innate.”
I understand in my body, as my shoulders hunch over my soft belly, a protective bird over her nest. My ribs clench like a metal cage. This stony emptiness in my belly is fear.
Room, period.
Rejection. Scarcity. Good (enough). Fear. I’ve started identifying fear as a trauma response, a protective mechanism. I duck, I cover. I think of the ways I’ve held myself back, especially the ten years I didn’t write, because I was afraid of not being good enough, of failing.
I am tired of fear being my default reaction, the driver of my narrative.
Innate, period.
I am tired. Of. Being. “Good.”
Room-innate.
My friend shares that her new essay has been published. Instead of doomscrolling, I read it. I become engrossed in the conviction of her words. In my heart space, I feel a smile spreading, warmth. I realize I can concurrently hold space for both grief and joy, mourning and celebration.
What if:
the horse is not as anxious as they say.
Another email arrives, this time regarding a residency, the words “I’m sorry” in the subject line. I still feel the inevitable gut punch, but my shoulders feel a little looser. I take a walk, I move. This time I finish the rest of The Write Attention episode on rejection. Around the 18 minute mark of the episode, cohost Brittany Felder offers a candid declaration, one I paraphrase until it rings true:
“I still know what I want, and I’m going to make that happen.”
What if:
rejection can be an invitation to revisit my work.
Good enough enough good.
What if:
rejection can be a reminder to celebrate the eventual wins, for myself and other writers.
This I know:
the horse is paddling its feet, back and forth.
What if:
rejection can be an ask to reconsider what it is I really want, if I still want it.
This I know:
I trust the horse will not leave, until I take the reins.
Does rejection change my desire to tell my story? No.
Will I still write, even if my work isn’t chosen? Yes.
The horse will be there.
*AI-generated answer by ChatGPT, accessed 9/20/23
**scarcity mentality definition by Studio ATAO.
Diann Leo-Omine (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize-nominated creative nonfiction writer born and raised in San Francisco, California (Ramaytush Ohlone land). A grateful alum of Tin House and Rooted & Written, she is currently devising a manuscript centering her maternal grandmother. Visit her website at sweetleoomine.com.
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