No Isn’t Always A Rejection

Life works better when we don’t take everything personally.

No. It’s my least favorite word. I know, you’re saying. Welcome to the world. Who wants a door slammed in their face? Who enjoys being the only one who didn’t get invited to the party?

But does no always mean rejection? It’s easy to think that way, but I had a reminder recently about the kneejerk reaction to hearing thanks, but no thanks.

It’s easy to say writers have are thin-skinned. The word on the street is that we’re more prone to vulnerable feelings than regular folks. But I think that’s a copout just because we’re the first ones to cry in our beer when life doesn’t go the way we want. If we’d look around instead of down in the dumps, we’d see everyone around us throwing temper tantrums when someone denies them a seat at the table. Other people may do a better job of covering up their hurts, but rejection isn’t a good look to anyone’s ego.

I’m focusing on writers today because, well, write what you know. And I know writing, and I know writers. And the main thing I know is that we get a lot of rejections. Even when we’re good at what we do, there’s limited space at the top of the heap for very good articles and books. The people in charge have tough decisions about whom to choose among all the writers trying to get their attention.

Typically, then, an editor, publisher, or agent will send out a form letter to writers whose work they have no time to read, whose first sentence doesn’t knock them for a loop, or whose style or topic doesn’t fit their publishing schedule.

Dear writer, it will say, thank you for submitting, blah, blah, blah.

The writer reads the form letter and promptly considers what type of suicide would be best that day: quick and painless, or long and drawn out to teach those bastards a lesson.

And if you think I’m joking, consider how often you’ve been rejected for something you desperately wanted, whether it was a date for the prom or a promotion at work.

Now that I’ve made my point about the prevalence of catastrophic thinking among normal, healthy humans, let’s turn the tables on that scenario.

Last night I had a phone call with one of my favorite writers and friends. I’ve known this person for over half my life. I know his passion for writing, as well as his skill and talent. Often, we talk about places he might send his work. He has no interest in self-publishing and looks to traditional routes to get a readership.

We discussed a recent, excellent, topical piece of his and ran down several possible options for submission. My friend is an outstanding writer, but, like many others, one whose star has not yet caught the attention of the powers that be in the publishing world.

He mentioned his desire to appear in The New Yorker. Like who wouldn’t. He told me he’d received a rejection letter from one of their editors after submitting a piece several years ago. I’ve seen those missives; back in the day, I would send TNY a piece just because, knowing it would come back months later with a form letter rejection.

But my friend got a hand-typed letter (this was a while ago) from an editor apologizing for not using his story but encouraging him to continue trying because his work was good.

At the time, my friend thought, yeah, if it was really good, why didn’t you publish it? He wrote it off as another stick in the eye, albeit a nicer one than a form letter.

Hold on, I said. Let me tell you a story. I’d heard this routine before, but from the other side of the desk.

I once took a series of writing classes from a teacher who had a long and illustrious career in New York publishing circles. He had been the fiction editor for a major publishing house as well as a mass magazine that offered high quality fiction and creative non-fiction pieces. In both jobs, he got submissions from all the major writers of the second half of the twentieth century, my reason for paying good money to take his classes.

During one class, he assigned David Quammen’s short story, Walking Out. It was a class that changed my reading and writing life forever because as we studied that story, from the brilliant foretelling in the first sentence, to the gut-wrenching ending, I learned to read as a writer.

After finishing the story and the subsequent discussion, the teacher, Tom Jenks, responded to questions about the writer. Quamman used to send pieces to him regularly, he said, when he was a fiction editor, and he always had to turn them down. It was a hard decision because he recognized the quality of the work. But the stories never fit the mission of his magazine, or they didn’t arrive when the subject matched the content they needed for a particular issue.

For whatever reason, as much as he wanted to publish a story by David Quammen, the right time never presented itself.

I don’t know what kind of letter Jenks sent to Quammen. Did he mail the usual form letter because his workload drowned him in so many writers to turn down every day he just couldn’t answer with a personal note? Or did he write encouraging letters such as my friend received from the New Yorker?

We know that Quammen gave up fiction soon after Walking Out was received with tremendous acclaim. More to the point, one of his recent books, written more than twenty years later, The Tangled Tree, was long-listed for the National Book Award.

I related this story to my friend the other evening. The punchline being, you never know why a story gets rejected. Magazines take a handful of pieces from the thousands (if they are among the top publications), so they routinely turn down excellent work because it doesn’t fit their needs.

My teacher gave me a peek behind the curtains at the editing world, otherwise, I would not have known the struggle this rightly-honored writer endured to achieve his place in the pantheon of American letters. I recounted it to my friend to encourage him to take that old letter from TNY at face value and not as rejection. I said he should continue to send his work to the place where he wanted to publish. Let those folks turn him down rather than have him do it for them by assuming they didn’t want him and not submitting at all.

But the larger lesson, is not whether you can or even should read between the lines of a rejection letter by an editor.

We all get rejected by someone at some time in our lives. Depending on our emotional temperament, some of us do a better job of coping with “No” than others. Lucky are those who can brush it off and move on. When we can’t, we can fall into the darkest of dungeons.

I’m not one to stand on a soapbox and lecture anyone to stop whining about rejection and move on with their lives. Last night I sent a book of mine to a friend for some advice. I’ve been editing it forever and had reached the point where I just couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t read it, couldn’t see its flaws, couldn’t stand to see all my shortcomings as a writer. I was really saying, please tell me it’s good because I don’t see it.

She told me the first chapter sucked. The news gutted me. I loved the opening to my book. She loved the second chapter, said that’s where I should begin my story. I went to bed thinking I was the worst writer on the planet because, well, that’s what I do.

So yeah, I get the pain of rejection.

But I’ve been around the block on this one. It wasn’t the first time someone said my writing didn’t work. I also sent my manuscript to this friend because I trust her.

I woke up and realized she’s probably right. Nothing wrong with prologues except the readers I’m trying to reach don’t like them. If I want to feel good about my book, I should publish it my way. If I want to gain a readership, which I do, I should follow her advice. I’ve written enough books in my life. This is not the hill I want to die on.

Yet the discussion hit me in my ego. That’s what hearing no does to us. She didn’t say I was the worst writer to ever come down the pike, but for a short while, a part of me heard that.

And what if I am? Does my writing skill, or lack of it, define my worth as a human being? Something inside me will come to that conclusion if I let it.

But backtracking for a minute, what my friend gave me was her opinion. We like different kinds of books. I dig my kind of opening, and she doesn’t. Just like my writing teacher couldn’t see a place for David Quammen’s story. Yet, probably some other magazine did because this guy is now known as one of our best writers. Did he take Jenks’ rejection personally? I have no idea, but at some point, he made a decision not to give up writing, not to let a rejection define him.

He kept doing what he wanted and needed to do, which was to write the best work he could and let the publications accept the work they needed to publish. His awards prove his worth, not one editor’s decisions.

And that’s what rejection ultimately is, one person’s opinion. When I was younger, I’d think I’d die if the cute guy didn’t ask me to the prom. What kind of awful person must I be if he couldn’t even take me to a dance?

But I couldn’t even remember his name by the time I found someone who really loved me. So much for one person’s opinion.

For people who struggle with rejection, it can take the better part of a lifetime to make peace with others not seeing your worth on a 24/7 basis. But we do ourselves harm and add obstacles to the horserace when we read between the lines and come up with someone else’s meaning and intention that have not been spelled out for us.

A form letter saying thanks but no thanks can have a hidden meaning that you need to up your writing game or that the editor is too busy to give your submission the close reading it deserves. But you really don’t know. The way a lot of offices are run, you might even get a response meant for a different writer and your precious story is still at the bottom of the slush pile where it will remain until the second coming.

But that’s life. It happens to all of us, or most of us. The best we can do, and I do mean the best, is not to assume we know what someone else is thinking.

We make a difficult situation worse by assuming a no is the signal to pull the cord on your life. Take a hint from another friend of mine, someone who has so much confidence, she could sell some of it on E-bay and still get through life loud and proud. When someone turns her down she files her nails and sniffs, “That jerk wouldn’t know a good piece of writing if it showed up in his salad,” sends it to the next editor on her list, and moves on with her life.

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’m also an editor for the publication, Rogues Gallery. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. Thank you for reading.