Changing the Story of Rejection

Creative Nonfiction By Megan E. O’Laughlin

Many years ago, I gave up on writing. I was only 25, floundering after years of travel post-college, and decided to get an MFA. After receiving a small pile of envelopes from various graduate schools, I quickly gave up. I shuffled the rejection letters into a little pile in my desk drawer and eventually recycled them all. I told myself a story: I’m not good enough, and this isn’t what I meant to do. Those thin envelopes brought along recitations of shame so many of us are used to: I’m not good enough, why did I bother, and so on. Within a few months, I worked a union job at a call center. Within a few years, I enrolled in social work graduate school. In the ensuing years, the shame hardened into my personal narrative: I was an artist and a writer but I gave it up. That’s not my calling.

I didn’t have much of what we would call rejection resiliency back then. I didn’t even realize this was something I could try to cultivate. Instead of recognizing that rejection sometimes indicates that I’m stretching my limits and reaching for something new, I interpreted it as failure. Thankfully, age and experience have taught me a lot, including the important lesson that rejection is something we all have to deal with, especially when writing.

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Perusing the internet, one will find so much advice about rejection: Move on!; It’s a myth; It’s God’s plan; It’s all in your mind. When I started writing (again) a few years ago, I was pumped to publish my essays about my career in mental health, the burnout I’ve experienced, and the things I’ve learned about myself and about humanity throughout my career. But after a few months of submitting, the rejections rolled in. The story of rejection returned as my mind persistently asked why I even bothered. My non-writing spouse made suggestions aligned with revenge. “You’ll show them when you publish it somewhere better. Then they’ll be sorry!” he said. I tried to explain how much of a part of our work rejection is and that it isn’t (or rarely is) a personal slight. Even when something is accepted, when a book is published, even by a huge publisher, there will be negative comments, or sales won’t be as good as hoped. No matter the success we find, we will also find difficulties. The rational parts of me understand all of this quite well. But the emotional parts of me? Not so much.

After a few years of writing in my forties, I’ve become familiar with the rejection faced by writers: from journal editors, publishers, residency jurors, and contest judges. I’ve also been turned down by potential partners and friends and employers and house sellers and, all those years ago, by a handful of graduate schools. In my therapy practice, I’ve faced the inevitable rejection by those who came to see me for therapy but then decided to leave or those I consult with who choose not to work with me for some reason (I often never know what it is). After years of such situations, I’ve come to understand that I am the right therapist for some but not for others. This idea parallels with writing, of course. My writing is not for everyone.

As writers know, rejection is part of our careers, a reality we often discuss. We talk about it as if we are preparing for a cold winter. Our practices focus on layering and strengthening. We rarely explore the option of avoiding the cold altogether. We try to get one hundred rejections in one calendar year. Or we send the piece out again on the same day we received the submittable message with that dreaded red rectangle. These are sound ideas and ones I’ve followed myself. Such approaches encourage ongoing exposure to the discomfort of earnest purpose and the shadow of refusal: they ensure you won’t give up. By gamifying our responses to rejection, we create some emotional distance from the experience. And yet, just like time outside during the cold winter, we will experience sensitivity, at least sometimes.

From the Latin reicere, to throw back, rejection returns something to us. A dreaded boomerang, it drops at our feet something special we’d hoped to share: our time, writing, our expertise. Within the sting of the rejection, we are reminded of our hopes for purpose. We want to share our time with others. We want to offer our creations to others. And despite such intentions, the possibility of rejection inevitably advances when we put ourselves out there. And when it catches us, it can hurt.

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I’m proposing another approach to rejection, and that’s to take some time to feel it. I don’t mean perseverating on the story, but instead letting yourself be in your body to feel it. Tune into the breathing. Notice the heart rate. Observe the sensations of a body disappointed. A twist on Mary Oliver: let the soft animal of your body grieve what it grieves. Even these—the small, accumulative rejections of literary writing—deserve our attention and compassion. And I can’t help but believe that when we become more willing to feel what we feel, we become stronger, which can eventually help when the larger griefs take hold.

If I’d allowed myself to feel the disappointment when I didn’t get into graduate school in my twenties, what would I have felt? Sadness, loneliness, fear of the future, perhaps. But I didn’t allow myself to feel it. Instead, I stuffed my feelings down just like I shoved those letters in the desk drawer, then quickly pivoted to another plan.

Now, when I feel the pain of rejection, I realize how heavy it sits in my body, the center of my trunk cold and leaden. Walking around the house, my head hangs low; gravity seems to affect me more. On such unwieldy days I become the sulking person at the bench press at the gym, after I checked my email for a quick beat between sets to find out that a journal turned down my new piece or a residency decided not to pick me. One afternoon, after a particularly painful rejection from a literary magazine, I sobbed into the dog’s fur. Sometimes, I commiserate with a writing friend, screenshotting the rejection and texting some crying emojis. And then there’s other times when there is no big emotion at all, only a shrug, a sigh, and that thrumming resolution to never stop trying. I’ve learned to give it all space: the sadness, embarrassment, the fury, and even the hope of it all, because none of us would do this if we didn’t have some hope. Once I give my feelings some space, just for a little while, the emotion seems to move on. I can then send the piece out again, and I scribble that tally mark on the post-it note on my bulletin board under Rejections.

Writers tend to be very sensitive; many of us have experienced ostracism and otherness throughout our lives. Growing up in a small town in Idaho I heard many things: fat, weird, gay, ugly, too sensitive, annoying. Many artists learn to embrace those initially rejected aspects of identity as we recognize the strengths in our experiences and viewpoints. And yet, we work in a field where rejection is inescapable. It’s hard for a rejection to not inflame those past wounds, to not take it personally.

Walking the rows of tables at the most recent AWP, my friend Whitney and I joked about confronting each journal that had turned down our work, and there were many. “You rejected me!” we’d say to them accusingly. We did say this to a few editors we knew and felt comfortable joking with. I chatted with one editor who sent me two extremely kind rejections within the span of six months. “I hope you understand it wasn’t the pieces,” they said. “Sometimes there are such beautiful pieces that don’t fit the issue I’m putting together. That’s what happened with your pieces.”

Working with literary journals, I see the other side of reading and editing, which helps me recognize that turning a piece down is rarely personal. We often try to find a specific type of piece or search for some cohesion or contrast between pieces. Most literary magazines have a certain vibe, and some pieces don’t fit in with the kind of things they publish. And, perhaps most commonly, many pieces contain strengths but can use more revision, or they just aren’t as strong as other submissions. And then, these decisions are based on opinion. I’ve seen pieces I turned down accepted by more prestigious journals. So much of this is subjective, after all.

Even when we rationally know these things, our hearts sometimes, inevitably, feel the pain of not being picked. It’s okay to feel it. When you have time, allow yourself to be present with the arising emotions and all the accompanying sensations. Stay aware of the mind coming in to tell a story about this, and instead, focus on how your body experiences the emotion. Tune into how you physically feel. Notice how you are breathing at this moment. Imagine what color this feeling would be if it were a painting, what animal it would be, and where it would live. Let your emotions have some space. After some time, like when my dog shakes off his stress and stretches out, turn your attention to the next thing, like going on a walk, running some errands, or getting back to writing if you feel up to it. Maybe write something completely different. Maybe rip up old printed drafts of your book. Maybe go outside and yell at the sky.

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A few years back, before the pandemic, I drove into the city to attend a training on a specific protocol for treating trauma in therapy. The meeting took place in the middle of Seattle. After some time sitting in traffic, I realized I was running late. Although it’s a mundane urban experience to be one of many cars stuck in traffic, that day it felt akin to being chased by a bear or some other dangerous predator. My heart hammered; I could feel the quick blood flow in my wet hands which gripped the steering wheel. As I sat in traffic snaking around Lake Union, I reminded myself that being late only meant I’d perhaps miss out on my choice of muffin (poppyseed- those in-person trainings always served muffins). Also, I probably wouldn’t have my choice of seat.  I took long, slow breaths, put on some music, and accepted my fate. The imaginary bear went away and I wound my Honda slowly through the traffic. I arrived at the training just ten minutes late and found a seat towards the front of the room. During the first break, I grabbed a poppy seed muffin from the snack table.

A staggering aspect of modern life is our brain’s inability to recognize the difference between real danger and minor difficulties. A vaguely written text message can feel like the threat of a wild animal. A denial from a small literary journal can feel like they are discounting of years of meaningful work. It’s important to remember that just because something feels a certain way, it doesn’t mean it is true. And just because we experience these emotions doesn’t mean we are bad or wrong. We are feeling what we are feeling, and while there’s no reason to judge or reject our own experiences, we also don’t have to take them at face value.

So much of human evolution has been about survival. Unfortunately, many people have experienced traumatic events that can understandably intensify this readiness for danger. Our emotions then fire up, preparing us for the worst things our minds can imagine. Emotions do this by design: they are hardwired, and we are all evolved from humans who did their best to survive difficulties. Our ancestors passed these instincts on to us. These intense emotional experiences are not made for the persistent annoyances and rejections of a modern writing life.

Sometimes I thank my feelings and the accompanying waterfall of worried thoughts because I know such reactions are part of who I am. These responses are part of how I look out for myself: they show up because my mind and body are trying to keep me safe. When I do this, I’m not rejecting my own experience but contextualizing it and accepting it, making it easier to feel it and then move on to whatever is next.

I wish I had allowed myself to feel my disappointment all those years ago when I received those slim envelopes in the mail, but I didn’t have the knowledge or the skills I have now. These days I am grateful to feel it all: the disappointments, the hopes, the joys, and everything in between. I will continue to give my emotions space when they need it, and I’ll remember that they never last forever. When they show up, all big and overwhelming, I’ll cry into the dog’s fur, complain to a friend, and sit with the heaviness until it passes. My story of rejection has changed and it’s now about change, determination, acceptance, and resiliency.

Remember that you can change your story, too.

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