As it’s January, a short thread for new writers on coping with literary rejection:
1)Rejection is hardwired into the creative process. It is, regretfully, an essential component of it.
A writer must develop a discipline to manage it & be able to move forward with it.
#writing

2) It’s not personal; it’s a specific reaction to a piece of work at a particular time, presented in a particular way directed to someone you don’t know.
Reduce the lottery factor by targeting well and research.

3)Editing is a form of rejection, yet no good writer calls that failure? Without editing, most books do not succeed.
A rejected ms is not a comment on your talent, your ambition or your future. it is a response to a specific proposal at a specific moment by a specific source.

4)How you respond to repeated rejection can point to whether writing is a vocation or a hobby. If it is an obsession, not a pastime, you are likely to power through.

5)
Learn to decode the rejections.

Any response is telling you something. A standard letter is telling you that your pitch didn’t resonate or lift itself above the competition.
A considered rejection shows engagement and might provoke further edits. It should inspire you.

6)
Rejection is an objective response and you should use it to improve pitch, material or submission choice.
Maybe you sent it too early? To the wrong person? At the wrong time of year?
Maybe the book is too like others?
All of these factors are out of your control.

7) read this rejection note from AA Knopf of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and remember William Goldman’s old adage “Nobody knows anything”.