By K.S. Palakovic, written March 2024
Rejection is a bit like rain.
Sometimes you expect it, and sometimes it comes out of nowhere and ruins your bright and beautiful plans. Some days you can light a candle that smells like Vanilla Serenity Me Time and hygge your way out of it. And other days, you get that one unfortunately we have decided to pass on this that you really, really wanted to be a yes, please your work is beautiful and so are you, and it feels like stepping in a puddle and discovering just then that your old rubber rain boots are not quite as waterproof as they once were, and now you’ll be stuck running four hours of errands in wet socks, and of course that car is coming up just a little too close to the sidewalk and a little too fast to hop away from in your now-squishy boots, and hello, you and your belongings have been baptized with half a street’s worth of gutter water.
Hallelujah.
I’m not a big rain fan. Much like the publishing slog or trying to find a writerly social media experience that doesn’t make me want to eat my own head, rainy days feel anywhere from dreary to genuinely depressing. Plus, I think my joints heard Steinbeck say, “one can find so many pains when the rain is falling,” and took it as a personal challenge.
But to paraphrase a wise anonymous person: if you don’t find joy in the rain, you will have less joy in your life but still the same amount of rain. If you want to write, and you want other people to see that writing, it means facing the rain of rejection: the steady, soul-eroding drip of no and this wasn’t really for me and sorry I didn’t finish it and thank you for submitting but we have chosen not to accept/represent/fund your work.
This isn’t just a problem for the echelon of novelists hoping to get a Big Five publication, or essayists chasing fame and fortune online. It’s for students in overly competitive MFA workshops. It’s for earnest new creators who’d be content with just some friendly community interaction, but whose posts meet a void of silence. It’s for writers who only share what they write with their moms (hi, Mom), because if you’re even slightly interested in growing or learning or trying new things, eventually you’re gonna make something that even your biggest fan—try as she may—just doesn’t love.
Rejection is an inescapable part of trying to connect with others through words. You just can’t hit the emotional bullseye every single time. And even if you know this on a logical level—no matter where you sit on the spectrum of writing optimism, from “getting published is essentially winning the lottery” to “it only takes one yes!”—having your dear words rejected doesn’t feel great. It can bring on confusion, frustration, shame, loneliness, and the kind of moping fits of creative insecurity only we artists are capable of. That rain, she’s gonna fall.
And while some rejections can feel kind, or helpful, or simply neutral—like just another kind of weather—it’s maddeningly unclear how to predict the depth of literary ennui one might sink to upon hearing no. For many writers, delivery makes a difference, even in the wording of a form letter: “thank you for taking the time to submit this piece; we will be passing on it, but we hope you find a place for it elsewhere” can be easier to swallow than “your piece was not accepted, goodbye.” To my brain, a no is a no whether it comes as warm wishes for future success, or a single automated notification, or as a blank silence that stretches on until I forget I’d sent anything in (track your submissions!). It’s all just water when I’d hoped for clear skies.
But how that intellectual no lands in the soft writer’s heart, well, that’s where things get curious.
Sure, I was devastated when my dream agent passed on representing my lumpy firstborn novel without a word of feedback. I’d been bursting with nervous excitement for the possibilities of fulfilling my oldest and dearest childhood ambition: I had written a book! I was going to get it published! I hadn’t learned yet that it truly wasn’t ready. Or that you do not re-query agents who’ve declined your manuscript, even if you revise the bejesus out of it, and even if, months of searching and learning later, you still think she would be the bestest, most perfect agent for your work. So, when that no arrived, it came with the realization that I had blown my one chance, in a way I could have prevented.
Be ye warned! Do not query too early.
But there’s actually another rejection that stings even more than that day-ruining, doused-in-grimy-city-water loss. Years of nos and yeses later, a small queer lit mag about plants very gently declined all six poems I sent them—including the one I’d written, with loving attention, just for that submission call. I’d assumed at least one piece would make it in. I’m queer! I love plants! I’m bisexual leaning against a trailing pothos vine right now.
Still, to this day, I don’t quite know why it hurt so much. I’ve put more of myself into other poems; I’ve felt surer elsewhere about my chances of acceptance and been wrong; I’ve spent far more time and effort and money on other submissions. But that’s how it goes, sometimes: can’t control the weather or your instinctive emotional reactions.
When you submit different things to different audiences at different times—literary magazines, contests, grants, agents, publishers, performances, applying for a mentor, applying to be a mentor—of course no two rejections will feel exactly alike. Even the same piece of your own writing, without a single revision, will change and grow in your reading of it as you do too. Over time, your goals and motivations may evolve. Your relationship to your audience may shift. Your relationship to rejection itself may change, too.
Fortunately, not every rejection will make you want to go hide under the covers. These days, for me, many of them feel like nothing at all: I see the notification, say a mental “oh well,” and in a few seconds it’s forgotten.
Some rejections can even be unexpectedly refreshing. The first writing grant I ever applied for, to fund a poetry manuscript, took many hours hunched over a laptop trying to describe my work like a “Real Poet” while the janky nerve in my right arm grew increasingly and unpoetically numb. I was proud of the effort, the learning experience, and the step forward in my writing career—tingly arm notwithstanding. A few weeks later, I decided to go in a different direction with the project and started bracing myself for the possibility of having to send the grantor an awkward “actually, thanks but no thanks.” So, when I learned I wouldn’t be awarded the grant, it came as a relief.
Meanwhile, a writing friend of mine talks with joy about an agent who declined her historical fiction novel after requesting the full manuscript. This agent read her novel closely and thoughtfully, understood what it was trying to say, and genuinely liked it. She had no idea her feedback would be the first time my friend received creative validation from a stranger. Because peers and coaches and family members have reasons to spare your tender writer feelings, but not an agent you’ve asked to read tens of thousands of your unpublished words, for free, when they’ve got a perfectly adequate form rejection saved and ready to go.
When my friend tells other people about how happy that rejection made her, they don’t get it. And you absolutely do not need to try and find a silver lining in a thundercloud of disappointment. Because the thing is, all of this, all these feelings and reactions that might not even make rational sense to the one feeling them? That’s ok. You can dance in the rain, or you can light that candle that smells like cupcakes and self-pity, or you can just sit and wait for it to pass. Feeling isn’t failing; you’re still a writer if rejections hurt.
Agent Naomi Davis has talked about how writers have to walk a tightrope of being thick-skinned enough to withstand rejection and criticism and indifference—but also vulnerable enough to be open to the human experience, to emotionally connect with readers. We can’t lock ourselves away from the world’s realities, including our own internal realities, and expect to have material anyone wants to read.
I don’t believe writing is precious, or particularly noble: it’s marks on a page that we hear as sounds in our head. But writing can be hard and it’s okay to say so. Having your creative baby turned away is tough, and pretending otherwise doesn’t make it any easier.
What does? For many of us, time and exposure help. I find that regular submissions, and the subsequent regular rejections, build a kind of tolerance against the emotional drop of hearing no. And casting your net widely, instead of pinning all your hopes on one opportunity, spreads out the disappointment and gives you a more realistic chance of success. Getting the odd acceptance once in a while helps, too.
Set goals that are important to you, even if they’re not what people around you are aiming for. Play a long game. Find reasons to write other than external recognition. When it’s rough, commiserate with other writers who get it.
And do some rejecting yourself: weed out the shoulds and musts that don’t work for you. I’ve got a fussy brain and a hoard of diagnoses that keep things interesting, so finding sustainable ways to keep writing means a lot of experimenting and adapting and politely ignoring anyone who claims to know the “One Weird Trick” to writing success. When you have a disability, or other big demands on your body, mind, or time, typical writing advice may not work for you—including how to handle hearing no. That’s okay. Find what you do need and defend it to no one but yourself.
Because sometimes rejections will just suck, and it’s comforting to recognize this, and to know you have a choice. Maybe at some point you’ll get tired of the deluge of nos and want to do away entirely with other people’s opinions of your writing. Sequester your work away from even your loving mother’s eyes. Move to Los Cabos, never deal with rain or disappointment again.
That’s always an option, for a while or forever. Allison K. Williams puts it frankly: “you have to be the kind of person who can hear a hundred nos before you get to yes, and . . . if you are not that kind of person, selling your art may not be for you.”
But she goes on to say: “It is not a cruel world full of no. It is a beautiful world in which the one (or many) persons to whom your work—your particular, personal work—speaks are waiting for you. Waiting for you to grow, to revise, to polish, to publicize, to sell, to share. Waiting for you to make art they love and will pay for.”
This is one piece of advice that I and my “Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria” come back to, however begrudgingly: don’t self-reject. Assuming someone won’t read or accept or pay for your work is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And, anyway, you’re not getting paid to reject your own work—so why not let someone else have that delightful responsibility?
For me, it’s always worth the risk of getting a little rain on my writing parade, because I’ll always have that itch to connect. What would I even be doing if I wasn’t trying to reach out across the foggy expanse of humanity to see and be seen? Algebra?
Writing’s easier. So, I’ll put on my peeling red rubber boots and keep at it. I hope you do, too, puddles and all.
Katherine Sarah (K.S.) Palakovic (she/her) is an editor for money and a writer, singer, model, and rock climber for fun. For no money and questionable fun, she is also a disabled queer lady. Her words have found homes in The Berlin Review, Renaissance Press, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Exposed Bone, and if the writer could, she would crawl into their pages and live there, too. Until then, she lives in Toronto, Canada. You can learn more about K.S. at kspalakovic.com or on Twitter @kitkatkelly. Join her Substack Writing Through at writingthroughitall.substack.com.
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