5 Tips for Overcoming Rejection as a Writer

it feels long long overdue for us to talk about rejection and how to properly deal with rejection if you're currently facing it in your process of trying to publish your book if you're somewhere along the publishing Journey you're likely well aware by this point that rejection is highly likely going to be a part of your publishing journey and you may have even encountered and faced rejection already it's true that no matter what rejection sucks I can't change that simple fact about it especially on something so so important to you and personal as your story you might start to feel like doors are getting slammed in your face and you might be wondering if your dream of publishing your book is even ever going to happen so to hopefully alleviate and mitigate some of that discouragement that I know you must be facing today I want to offer some practical tips on how to reframe rejection so that you can see it in a new light and hopefully ultimately not let rejection get you down or keep you from achieving your publishing dreams if you're somewhere along the book writing or publishing journey and you're new to this channel I recommend subscribing if you haven't already every week I either post a video with tactical writing tips or I talk about the publishing industry so if any of that interests you I'd love to have you join this amazing Community I also have a free resource for anyone who is working on a story currently in the description below it's called My Free story self assessment worksheet and it's a fun easy quiz designed to help you look at your story from a different outside perspective because I know you must be so deep in it that you can't see the forest from the trees at this point downloading that resource is going to sign you up for my newsletter where I interview publishing industry experts and successfully published authors and I'm telling you they're giving some really really helpful insights and New Perspectives in the newsletter so you don't want to miss out on any of that if you want to go straight to see the past installments the link is in the description so let's talk about the first way to overcome rejection which is to not view it as a negative I know that sounds counter-intuitive and frankly impossible how can rejection not be negative but I do want to open you up to the possibility of considering that certain rejections may be a blessing in disguise whether they seem like it at the time or not I saw an agent post on Twitter recently that writers shouldn't think of rejection as a closed door but as a redirection and I really liked that reframing because it's not necessarily a no to your dream of publishing by any means it is a step towards getting you to the person and people who are actually going to be your publishing Partners so a friend recently told me about this Chinese Parable that I think is actually very relevant to this topic it goes something like this a farmer had his horse run away and when that happened the villagers came to him and said I'm so sorry that your horse ran away that sucks and he said well I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing yet then the next day the horse returned with several other horses so now he has a whole group of horses on his farm and the villagers came to him and said that's so awesome you're so lucky that you have all these horses now and he said well I'm not so sure that it's a good thing or a bad thing then the next day his son is training one of the new wild horses and falls off of it and breaks his back the villagers come to the farmer and say oh my gosh I'm so sorry that sucks and the farmer says well I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing and then the next day the Constable of the Town comes to the farm and says that there's a draft for an impending war and any able-bodied young man needs to go into the military and the villagers say wow you're so lucky your son can't be drafted and he says well I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing so the point of this Parable as I take it at least is that you never know what the future might hold and something that might seem like an obstacle something very negative happening to you right now may actually end up putting you in the right direction and the future could actually turn out in your favor so I want you to approach each rejection with that more neutral mindset my next tip for overcoming rejection is to remember that everyone gets rejected you've likely heard before these statistics about major best-selling renowned even authors who faced obstacles and rejections along their publishing Journey For example Stephen King and Dr Seuss and JK Rowling have been very open about the rejections they faced in their publishing journey I guarantee you that even those authors you are seeing on the New York Times bestseller lists that you're seeing featured on the Shelf in Barnes Noble have faced rejection and continue to even though it likely seems like everything is going exactly as they want to it could be that they're facing rejection and getting their next book published or rejection for a literary award or rejection for a media feature or a book club Spotlight or rejection for a specific marketing campaign the truth is that nothing in publishing is guaranteed so know that you are absolutely not hot alone in having to face rejection it's just something you're going to have to deal with even as you develop in your career I personally cannot name a single author who I've worked with including best-selling authors who are at the top of their game who have not faced reduction in some form or another now I know that doesn't make the rejection suck less but I hope it helps you know that you're not doing anything wrong by getting rejected it is just part of putting yourself out there in the publishing industry my next tip for overcoming rejection is to know that rejection does not dictate the value of your story when you are rejected by a literary agent or a publisher what that means is that that particular person just did not want to invest in your story at this time it's possible that they just didn't connect with it for whatever reason or it's possible that they did connect with it but they couldn't see a path to selling it successfully from their perspective which is ultimately the goal of publishing in the traditional all publishing space but publishing is an inherently subjective business so a rejection from one literary agent or one publisher absolutely does not mean that you're going to get rejected from every other literary agent or publisher in fact someone else might love the same book that didn't quite resonate with another agent everyone has their own tastes right we often say in publishing that it just takes one meaning that it only takes one literary agent for you to sign with for you to be on your way toward publishing and then one publisher or editor at a Publishing House to make you a book deal for your book to get out on the shelf and that is the case that is how the industry works you ultimately just have to find your people and find that perfect match for you of course we hope that you have multiple agents and multiple Publishers interested in your book but many many books are very successfully published and even become best sellers with just that one or two people taking a chance that's why querying really does come down to a numbers game my final tip for overcoming rejection is to remember how far you've come even though you may be disappointed with the rejections that you're facing now remember where you were at the start of this journey and don't forget to celebrate all of the huge Milestones that you have achieved since then first you got to write your story you finished the final page you put this idea that was in your head down on paper and you accomplished something that only a very small fraction of people across the world ever do in their lifetime which is finish a book also in reaching out to literary agents and Publishers you have put yourself out there which takes a profound amount of Courage remember back when you were just starting with the idea of your book maybe thinking down the line about it getting published one day and you thought how exciting it would be to get to this point well now you're here and that's amazing you truly have made it so far already also remember that no matter what happens with your book from here you are a better writer and a better Storyteller from Simply finishing this book you have now developed a wonderful and amazing skill set that you can take with you for the rest of your life and that is not to be discounted you are only going to get better and better from here I hope this video helped you reframe your approach to rejection and helped you maintain an optimistic and positive attitude as you continue to pursue publishing let me know in the comments if you've gotten any rejections thus far in your journey and if you feel comfortable sharing the number of rejections that would be really awesome to see I think there is a lack of transparency in publishing especially around how many rejections authors face to get to that coveted book deal moment so the more open we can be the better I think it can really be helpful to see where others are at in their journey and help support each other in that way if you are currently in the process of querying literary agents and just feeling discouraged and down about the whole thing I recommend checking out my video where I give some motivation specifically for querying authors if you liked this video it would mean a lot to me if you hit that Thumbs Up Button don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and grab your free story self assessment worksheet in the description below thanks so much for watching and happy writing [Music] thank you

Channel: Alyssa Matesic

Views: 2,153

Keywords: authortube, overcoming rejection, dealing with rejection, how to overcome rejection, writing rejections, how to deal with writing rejection, literary agent, why books are rejected, rejections in publishing, why literary agents reject manuscripts, rejections from publishers, book publishing, how to get published, writing a book, publishing advice, how to get a literary agent, traditional publishing, how to write a book, how to find literary agent, big five publisher, novelist

Id: vZY91-0f26k

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 11 2023