Rejection

This Saturday, I'm supposed to give a talk to the Central Pennsylvania Romance Writers. The topic?

Rejection.

They picked the topic. I told 'em fine. Then I realized I don't have a lot to say about it.

Not because I don't experience it anymore. Quite the opposite, actually. I've published eight novels, two of them have been optioned for movies, two are New York Times bestsellers, and guess what? I still get rejected -- a lot.

Why? It comes with the territory. You don't become a surgeon if you can't stand the sight of blood. You don't become a writer if you can't handle rejection. This isn't supposed to sound tough and insensitive -- it's simply true. Plenty of people quit after they get rejected enough times. The rest of them keep going. We have a word for those folks. We call them writers.

Face it. Rejection sucks. You spend days, weeks, months, pouring your most intense hopes and energies into a project, neglecting family, friends, immediate gratification, all on pure faith. You allow yourself to hope for the best. You dare to dream of success. You wait. You hope. You check your email.

And the universe answers you with a big, cold, abrupt "no."

Imagine showing up for a first date in your best clothes, snappiest haircut, with big plans for the evening and a song in your heart. You knock on the door -- it opens -- and the person in the doorway punches you in the stomach.

Rejection.

It blows.

So what can you do about it? Nothing. It's going to happen. And if it's not happening, maybe that means you're not reaching high enough. Not stretching as far as you could.

Fact: Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick got rejected by eight publishers before it found a home at Houghton Mifflin. An editor there read it, loved it and offered me a two-book deal on the spot. The movie rights were auctioned off a week later. It happens.

Meanwhile, guess what? I keep getting rejected. Why? Because I keep trying different things. TV show ideas. Movie scripts. Crazy young adult ideas that probably shouldn't exist. People say no. They say things like, "I wanted to like it," and "it started out so well," and "it just didn't work for me."

It still hurts. But I keep swinging. Because that's what you do. Because the alternative is sitting around wondering what could have been, if you hadn't quit.

There are some things you can do, to soften the blow. They're pretty simple.

1) Always have something new that you're working on. Let yourself feel good about it. Dedicate yourself to the new project. Not only will it make the waiting period more tolerable, but when "no" comes -- and don't kid yourself, because that's usually the response -- it makes it easier to take. A little.

2) Find yourself some non-writing activities, ideally physical ones. I got a rejection this week. A nice polite no. It put me in a crap mood for the next two hours. I didn't get out of it until I climbed a tree with my two kids. We sat up there and ate apples and talked until I had to go to work. And you know what? It worked. You don't have to climb a tree. Maybe get a pedicure. Go to the gym. Paint the bathroom.

3) Complaining sometimes does help. Get it out of your system and move on. Talk to other writers. We've all been through this, and we're still going through it. I don't care how long you've been writing...when you're this personally invested in an intense act of self-expression and communication, getting a "no" is still going to hurt. It just doesn't hurt for as long as it used to.

4) Take rejection for what it is -- encouragement to improve. These "no"'s are stepping stones, and if you line 'em up, they're going to lead you somewhere better. Seriously. I've been there. I know. Editors everywhere are dying for good writing, good stories, engaging prose. Every single day, they go to the mailbox, electronic or otherwise, dying to blown away by whatever's waiting inside. My best rejections had a single word or two handwritten on the top -- usually something simple like "good" or "try us again" -- and I'm here to tell you, these notes from the trenches were nourishing than a lifetime of well-meaning friends and family members telling me how great it was that I was writing.

We're soldiers, guys. Pain is the game, and we're going to take some losses. But there's a reason why we're doing this -- because we believe in ourselves, and our potential to write stories that people want to read. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but endurance never is.

So ring the doorbell.

Take the gut-punch.

Then go out tomorrow, and try again.