Master of Rejection | Laurie Petrou | TEDxRyersonU

what do you love doing that you're really bad at something that you royally stink at but that you still enjoy doing just hang on to that thought we'll come back to it later I'm going to talk to you about rejection I am a reject I am also and perhaps this is uncontained and impolite to say but I am also a high achiever and successful at what I set out to do I am a writer of fiction who has written an awful lot and experienced years of rejection but I am also a writer of fiction who is experienced success won an international award and has recently signed her second book contract so how do i reconcile these two things being a failure and being a success I'm going to tell you that one depends on the other that rejection is a key ingredient to creativity and success but pushing out work that gets rejected that this makes you a better creator it's like making the first pancake in the batch if all you ever made was the first pancake and it was crap people ate it you'd never know you had a whole batch of great pancakes in you thank you Rory Gilmore because if it wasn't for the work that was bad there wouldn't be the work that was good these are Booker Award winners Paul Beatty in Marlon James Paul beedis book was rejected 18 times Marlon James this book was rejected 78 times 78 times now I don't know the inner workings of these books but I think it's entirely possible that the books that were rejected are not the same as the books that they became we too often console ourselves with tales of famous creators whose seminal works were rejected by fools who failed to see their genius and we like to think that these fools are probably cooked kicking themselves for not seeing the brilliance in the work but maybe we should rather be thinking that those rejections were stepping-stones on the way to the work reaching its potential if you are failing it means you're trying if you are failing it means you're succeeding at trying which is something right the author Kim Lau talks about this in her article why you should aim for 100 rejections a year the idea what she borrowed from another author is this she says collect rejections set rejection goals I know someone who shoots for 100 rejections a year because if you work that hard to get that many rejections you're sure to get a few acceptances too now I asked you what is it that you love doing that you're really bad at and this is a question that we often ask students applying to our undergraduate program it's one of my favorite questions because I feel like it's really telling what do you find joy in despite or perhaps because you aren't sissies succeeding at it what does it say about you that you are willing to continue to do something that you're bad at and furthermore that you actually enjoy it for me it's card games and board games I love them but I'm terrible at them sometimes I'll cajole someone into playing a board game with me that they've never played before and I'll teach them the rules and then lose to them immediately it's humiliating I also love dancing but I have a feeling I look like Elaine from Seinfeld when I do it makes me wonder what is the relationship between complete abandon exposure and willful failure at one thing something that doesn't matter to me and then returning to the things that I know I'm good at but that continue to present a challenge I would argue that it's like going to the gym it's working off the spare tire of pride if we are willing to put ourselves out there and fail on a grand scale we can take a deep breath and return to the things at which we are improving we work off the fat and we increase the muscles we get stronger and better I am an award-winning professor and an award-winning author I am also a reject I am a maker scholar an artist thinker these compound identities are important to me because together they underpin the words when they're together for example that artists don't think on an intellectual level or that scholars don't understand the struggle of making art together they work they work in a way that rejection goes with success the way that failure is part of the creative process I am a failure achiever but I am also a deeply sensitive person who like many creative people take it very hard when the work that I put out there gets a lukewarm response or worse none at all I feel like I have crafted this special thing and I've sent there to the nest only to discover that it can't fly creativity is highly personal it's taking off the clothes of our ideas and asking someone to love them just as they are think of poetry and dance and painting some of these art forms exposes that our most vulnerable creativity is often a glimpse into who we are and what we love best because so many artists can't make a living with their art it is often what people do outside the confines of their family and their occupations sometimes they are only doing it because they love it as for me when things don't work out I am prone to asking why is this so hard to which Mad Men's Don Draper would say you're good get better stop asking for things but we are now in a paradise for those who want that kind of immediacy and to circumvent the gatekeepers the people in positions of creative power who wield the sword that can anoint you and your work worthy producers festival committee members publishers agents granting bodies traditionally the creative model was this we worked and schemed and slogged to get our approval of ex producer or y publisher but perhaps the power dynamic has shifted mostly for young creatives who are coming of age in a new creative model if you are a musician or an artist or a journalist or almost any other creative type you can get your work out there you needn't ever seal your work into an envelope and send it up to the upper echelons of taste makers of the world and wait for an excruciating number of weeks and months to get the approval from ex publisher or Y producer you publish your work yourself in seconds you get feedback immediately from your peers you can watch in real time as you are approved via likes and followers and shares we become addicted to the immediate approval social medias means of approval is often our measure of success great reviews and shares are currency we are our culture of prosumers produce your consumers in a creative democracy where the cream rises to the top and our peers or the taste makers there's no waiting in this scenario in a matter of moments a creative maker could discover that someone in Moose Jaw loves their work and someone in Brazil thinks they should never quit their day job we've all heard stories of how Fifty Shades of Grey started as fan fiction or of musicians who are discovered on YouTube and artists on Instagram there is a tendency in this democratized model to reject the rejecters to combat why you're or someone else's work wasn't chosen we have all been on one side of this conversation they don't know what they're talking about it's all about marketing I'd like to see them try they probably live in their mother's basement our friends our supporters in our own secret hearts want to believe that our work was rejected through some flaw either in the system or the people who rejected it we believe that insidious monetary reasons or nepotism or blindness prevents people from seeing the brilliance this is my story I have written three books the first was picked up by the first and only publisher I sent it to the experience was wonderful it was well received it was well reviewed and I was signed with an amazing agent I then wrote two novels the first was good it was rejected by all the top-tier publishers then all the smaller ones and every single time my agent sent me an email with a rejection it stung I felt like I had no talent most of the rejection letters said that I was a new talent and they looked forward to seeing more of my work as though I hadn't just spent years working on this thing as though there was more work spoiler alert there was there is people told me to self-publish it but I made the choice not to do that maybe I'm old school maybe it's because I came of creative age during the era of conventional publishing but mostly it's because I truly believe in the talent and skills of those who make decisions of what to publish I believe they know what they're doing these are the people who make the books that I love and if I continue to read and love books that come out of the publishing industry it's because I believe in that system I kept sending it out I kept getting rejections many rejection letters begin thank you for submitting thank you for submitting it reminds me of being in high school in dilly-dallying or so over some creative thing or another and my brother who is much wiser than I at the ripe old age of 17 said well no one's going to thank you for not trying I kept trying I decided to write another book it was better it was much better it was so much better because I had learned an enormous amount from reading those rejection letters I learned that the reader saw something different than what I saw what a gift to have people with keen eyes and ears hear and see and read your work I revised the book many times there have been countless dress I added I took away I edited I polished it to a sheen and then the new novel was rejected many times I revised it I kept working in the meantime I submitted it to an international contest for unpublished works that feature the inner lives of women the half the world global literati award and in the midst of a summer of rejections when I thought my agent was going to break up with me I got a phone call telling me that I had won the contest beating out authors in 59 other countries and winning a staggering monetary prize they told me while I sat on a rock up north with my family that CBC would be interviewing me in half an hour I had to go down to the lake to get good reception my life changed in an instant and still I continued to revise my book to make it better the rejections made me set my goals higher when I started this talk I was still making the book better and it is large part because the rejections that beget the revisions that beget success that beget more revisions the first draft of this talk was different than this one it was worse it got better when I was on the third draft of this particular talk on rejection I got a phone call from my agent she told me that HarperCollins is going to be publishing my novel I think I may have deafened her in my absolute joy on the phone it turns out I'm not quite as serene in the face of success as I am in the face of failure it had not come easily and because of that it was so much sweeter and I will continue to refine the book right up until they tell me that it's ready we too often reject the rejecters they should be thanked rather than scorned because they had a role in improving the work think of it this way your best work could get better your best work might be what you consider your worse work in a few years your highest achievement to date the thing that took you years and that no one has yet appreciated might be the bottom rung of your creative ladder what a wonderful liberating thought think of projections as the food you need the sustenance you require to reach as well as thinking as fate a failure as a stepping stone to success think of failure our success as a stepping stone to failure that it's part of the journey and not the destination I recently was speaking to someone about the perils of doing a PhD it is lonely difficult work this is slog is akin to sending yourself out on an ice floe is nothing but your ideas to keep you company I don't think I've gotten it over it quite myself yet at any rate the person I was speaking to told me that they had received some excellent advice and it is this your PhD should be the worst work that you do think of that the highest level of education you can receive is only the beginning it's meant to be hard and it's only part of the journey maybe the beginning it was for me I also recently had coffee with a former student he is early in his creative career and wanted to meet because he was already feeling like he was besieged with rejections from granting bodies and festivals and contests he asked me with a plea in his voice where will I be in 10 years I told him that by then he'll have had many successes that will seem small to him by then a huge to him when they happened that he will continue to get turned down but that they will make his work better and that because of them he'll set his goals higher than they are now out of reach they are goals because they aren't easy they're supposed to be hard or the successes which we get because the rejections taught us so much wouldn't be worth shouting from the rooftops this is my advice set both reasonable and impossible goals you might pass by the reasonable ones on your way to achieving the impossible consider that any act of putting your work out there is not just a chance to succeed but a chance to learn be open to change listen to feedback be gracious when you receive it gratitude should be given not just to those to deliver the news of our success but to those who convey our failures share the work of others absorb it read listen watch and joy and finally remember this we're in this together many many of our heroes have stories of tales that they almost gave up they were filled with despair and lacked confidence they kept going and so can you difficulties rejections they are the rungs on the ladder to success but we are foolhardy to step on those who give them to us on our way up this because of them that we can climb so high thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 74,570

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Canada, Life, Creativity, Life Development

Id: JwDW8NG7vBg

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2017