Rejection, Part 2

“After rejection – misery, then thoughts of revenge, and finally,oh well, another try elsewhere.” Mason Cooley.

The misery part of the above quote I totally agree with. After my most recent rejection I did the following, not necessarily in this order: cried, ate a package of Milano cookies, cried, cursed the person rejecting me, cried some more but now howled, too, ate two chocolate donuts then two more, cried, cursed the air and then fumed.  After fuming I moved into seething, then cried again, not because I was upset about the rejection, but because I had now moved into embarrassment over it. I was ashamed that I had told people about my potential good news – based on what I was told by the person reviewing my work – and now I had to tell these same people that I had – gulp! – been rejected.

Red faced, trembling lip, crimson eared, embarrassed.

I wasn’t able to tell anyone for a week. Seven days I held all that emotion in, stuffing it with bad food and mentally castigating myself. Life I said in my  previous post, I had to talk myself off a proverbial ledge.

And then, the final part of the above quote filtered through all the hurt and the rage and the humiliation of failing. I woke up one day and decided that this wasn’t going to dissuade me from writing, that it wasn’t the end of the world or of my writing career, and that today was a new day.

A little Scarlett Ohara-ish, but true.

If we were to quit every time we failed at something, new inventions would never be discovered.

If we were to give up on love every time our heart was broken, we would never know the joy of rebirth that new love brings.

If I quit every time something I’d written was rejected for publication – no matter how much it hurt or how wrong the rejector was about it – I wouldn’t be at my laptop right this second typing this.

So, tomorrow is another day ( Thanks, Scarlett for making me realize that!) and there are more places to submit to and different people to read what I’ve written.

Rejection hurts. This is true. But it’s not the end of the world.

I have to go exercise those damn donuts and Milanos off now.