Ten of the Best Rejection Quotes Made by Successful Writers
Some publications rejected your article? You are not alone!
Sometimes it's hard to write. Figuring out what your work will be, deal with style, syntaxis, and grammar. From time to time, not even Grammarly will help!
After hours of writing and editing your work, searching for courage in the depths of your soul, moments later, you hit the publish button. You are praying that the Almighty Curation Algorithm will see your work and publish your article.
Nevertheless, a few hours later, you find a note under the bell icon telling you X publication rejected your masterpiece 👎. You wonder if all the effort was worth it.
Don’t despair. You are in the company of the writing gods. And here are some quotes to prove it.
1. “I wasn’t going to give up until every single publisher turned me down, but I often feared that would happen.” — J. K. Rowling.
As writers, we all see our work as our children. Many times we struggle to come with an idea. We decide to write when procrastination kicks in, and we find hundreds of things to distract us.
But with determination, we succeed, and after what seems like an eternity, we finish editing. It is when our greatest fear starts. Thinking, where can I send my work? What publication will be the right one? What if they don’t like my article and reject it?
After the internal fight ends, we decide where to send it and click the button, hoping it’s published. But later, we receive the rejection notice, and our world collapses, and we wonder if we should try again.
You are at the moment that divides the achievers from the quitters. Time after time, history has taught us that, like many successful writers, we should try once more.
How many times are you going to try before you decide to quit?
2. “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.” — Sylvia Plath.
Do you remember how many times you fell before you could walk? Or the multiple time you hit the pavement while learning how to ride a bike?
We seem to forget that, to succeed. We first have to try. No one achieves something without first taking the chance to do it. Think about this the next time you receive a rejection notice, and before you tore it into pieces or delete the email, make a note or save it as proof that contrary to thousands who dream of becoming a writer, you are among the ones who tried.
Think of them as the participation trophies given to children as a reward for their effort, taking the risk to compete, and be with the ones who tried, instead of sitting on the benches wishing they’d have the chance.
Instead of feeling bad for the rejection notes, make your trophy stand, showcasing the number of times you tried.
3. “A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success.” — Bo Bennett
Next time you get a rejection letter, think of the number 72. It is the number of stone steps leading up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art entrance in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Yes, you know the ones known as the “Rocky Steps,” and remember the scene where Rocky climbs the stairs. If you are too young and haven’t seen the movie, then at least google it. Or think about The Joker’s stairs in the Bronx, the Momo staircase in the Vatican, The Tulip stairs in London, or Harry Potter Hogwarts’ stairs.
Use the ones you like the most as a metaphor for the number of steps you have to climb before you get to the top. It depends on you how long it is going to take to make it to the top.
It’s your choice to stay at the bottom or make an effort to climb the stairs one, two, or three at a time to reach the top, but remember, they are just steps.
4. “Every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better.” ― Steve Maraboli
Have you ever read one of your old articles and think you could write it better now? It’s because you are a different person from when you write it to the next time you read it.
Every word you write, paragraph you edit, and each of the times you clicked the publish button has made you a different person. You learn each time something different, maybe a new bit of information you researched, a new command, or even the way you type on your keyboard.
Some are big lessons and others little ones, but each time, you become better. Therefore, never despair about rejection, try to learn from everyone, and use it to improve your subsequent work.
Think of yourself as a fighter who has to take many punches before winning. With each one, he learns something more about his opponent’s offense and defense.
So adjust your sight and throw the next punch. With time and practice, you will find the best way to do it and win the fight.
5. “Rejection is more valuable than inaction. All that I have learned until now has been because of rejections. Inaction didn’t teach me a thing.” — Neeraj Agnihotri.
Remember the story that Thomas A. Edison used to tell, about the thousand times he tried to make the lightbulb work before success? He didn’t quit. Instead, he learned from each failure and improved the next one.
Well, think of your work as a new lesson to write your masterpiece. Learn from every mistake, rejection, and each note you receive. Inside they hide the secret road to improve your work.
Rejection can be the cruelest teacher, but if you learn from it, you’ll become better every time.
The only thing you’ll learn from an article you didn’t send is the amount of space you need to store it.
6. “You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success — but only if you persist.” — Isaac Asimov.
Do you know what the most rejected article you will ever have is? The answer is simple. It is the one you haven’t sent. Let’s say it takes you five minutes to find it in your files, ten more to read it, and maybe 15 to re-edit. In total, it is half an hour, so the article you already finished and didn’t send gets rejected at least 48 times every day.
And if you multiply that number by the days in a week or a month… You get the idea; you are your worse critic and the most severe executioner. No one rejects your work more than you, so maybe instead of having all those articles just getting old, perhaps you should send them.
They are not a bottle of fine wine aging in your cellar or cars waiting to become classic vintage models. Most of them are getting old and mossy, and the ones you wrote about a recent event are like fresh fruits, not waiting to be ripe but becoming rotten.
Unless you plan to live for a hundred years more and submit your work to a history publication, you’re wasting your work and the time you spent writing.
7. “Have you had a failure or rejection? You could get bitter. That’s one way to deal with it. Or… you could just get BETTER. What do you think?” ― Destiny Booze.
No one likes rejection. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how many times it happens. From the day in kindergarten when your friends didn’t let you play with the building blocks, leaving you by yourself with a noseless Mr. Potato Head. To yesterday’s rejection email from the publication, you submitted your article.
The feeling is the same, and if you survived the “Mr. Potato Affair” (which you did unless you are a politician debating at the Senate), you could also move ahead from the rejection.
But as that day in kindergarten, you have two options: either carry a grudge for the rest of your life or learn from it and improve your social skills. In other words, get bitter or get better.
The choice is always yours, and by the way, don’t take it so personally, they rejected your article, not you!
8. “Every rejection is an incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.” — James Lee Burke
Like a marathon runner, you have to accept that every step is a challenge. The more you run, the harder it gets. That is why all runners talk about the famous “wall,” not the border wall but the point when you are so tired that you feel like quitting.
Many runners think about the marathon as two different races, one for the first 20 miles and the last and most difficult final 6.2 miles or 10-K, where you’ll need the most effort to finish. They refer to this point as the “wall.”
At this moment is where they “hit it” and quit, or “break it” and end the race. No matter how many supporters or competitors they have, how many trainers, the number of sponsors, or if they are on the U.S. team at the Olympics. Only they decide whether to stop trying or continue until the finish line.
Rejections are the same, and you can accept them and learn, increasing the value of your work or see them as the ballast slowing your career. It is only a number of bricks (aka rejections) you are going to take.
You decide how tall your rejection wall is and whether you will “hit” or “break” the barrier.
9. “This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address.’ Just keep looking for the right address.” — Barbara Kingsolver.
Make a habit of taking the time and reading the rejection notes they send you, and if you can, try to ask why they rejected your article. But be aware you might not like the answer, nevertheless look for the lessons hidden inside.
There is always something you can learn. Perhaps the title was too long or not clear enough, you didn’t format your work according to what they want, some of your photos didn’t have the credit, or maybe they didn’t like it.
No matter the reason, there is always something you can improve and try with some other publication. Please make a list of your articles, the name of the publication, the date you sent it, and a note with the rejection reasons. There is nothing more embarrassing and makes an editor mad than sending your work twice to the same publisher with at least making some change.
Also, consider having a checklist with the name of the publication, the editor’s name, their submission requirements, and most importantly, if your work fits with the topics they expect. Don’t send a political article to a pets’ publication unless you’re writing about Champ and Major Biden.
Never discard your work because of a rejection. Instead, check if you sent it to the right publisher.
10. “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill.
The most important lesson to learn from rejections is to use them as the dumbbells at the gym, the first time they feel impossible to lift. But as you keep lifting the weight, you get used to them and build powerful muscles.
To use rejection as an excuse to quit is like stop eating because you didn’t like a restaurant or never drink beer because you disliked the flavor the first time. If this were the case, most breweries would be out of work since almost no one likes beer the first time.
If you make that big fuss about rejections, maybe you are not in the right business. Instead, go and grab a cold beer from the fridge and make a toast. In the end, either you’ll get the taste of rejection, or after a few brewskis, you won’t mind at all.