I wasn’t going to blog. At least not for quite some time. Sometimes I do
wonder about it, all these words endlessly, pointlessly spewing. I decided to shut the fuck up. But then – ho ho – I got a direct message:
Just out of interest, have you ever done a blog on
the fear of rejection? Sep
30, 7:56 AM.
Have I? No, I
don’t think so, not directly. I answered
– but didn’t get a reply. So I figured
maybe I should. Write a post, that is. Cos I know a lot of people who seem to let the R
word drag them down, stop them reaching for the stars.
I dunno. As a freelance journalist, rejection is so
familiar, it could be my mother, sister and aunt all rolled into one. You pitch ideas – they’re turned down.
Sometimes you don’t even get an email saying ‘no thank you.’ As a book writer,
you get it in shedloads too. I have
files upon files on my PC of unpublished books – proposals lovingly worked and
reworked; some progressed into chapters over weeks, months. Only to be rejected. It’s par for the course. You have to keep trying; you can’t always
expect to get it right first time. Sometimes you look back and you think,
‘Yeah, that really was shit; what the bejesus was I thinking?’.
Sometimes you look back and think ‘Feck, that was fabulous; why didn’t
it sell?’
Funny thing; the ones that really get me, time and
again, are the ‘nice’ rejections, as my agent calls them. I’ve had a bucket of those for Samael, my YA
novel. The ones that go on about how
wonderful the writing is, how gripping the plot, how different and
exciting…blah blah..except…there’s always an except. And a rejection, however nice, is always a
rejection. Except…hmm…not always. ‘If
you ever rework this, do let me have another look.’ And, yeah, sometimes you need to rework; to
shift things slightly and then try again.
What do you learn from it? Bottom line? Keep trying. If it’s worthwhile, don’t give up. You have to be honest with yourself. Maybe it isn’t right, maybe something needs to be
changed, to shift. Or maybe the timing is wrong. Or maybe – hey - it’s just bad
luck, Fate, the malign universe, whatever.
But you have to keep trying. I know a writer who won’t submit his work
because he’s scared of being rejected.
Well, okay, his approach means he won’t be rejected but he sure as hell
won’t be published either, will he? It’s
like the lottery – the odds may be high but if you’re not in it, you sure as
hell can’t win it, can you?
But I suspect my shy DM friend isn’t thinking about
work. I imagine she’s thinking about
relationships. And, ah, that is slightly
different. But, come to think of it, not
that different. Fear of rejection is,
bottom line, fear of losing face, right?
And, honestly, is it so very awful if you lose your face? What is a face after all? A construct, a mask we present to the world.
Is it the *real* us? No.
People bang on a lot about relationships. About ‘the
rules’ and so on. About having to ‘play the game’ - like a relationship is a
game of chess. And, on some levels, yes it is…(who was it that said it was
actually war – was it Ovid? And, of course, chess is civilised war) but you
have to start playing in the first place.
If you don’t lay your pieces on the board, you ain’t going
nowhere…except back to Spider Solitaire.
So, to those who fear rejection, I would
say…don’t. Embrace the possibility.
What’s the best that can happen? The
other person will say ‘Yes!’ What’s the
worst that can happen? The other person
will say ‘No.’ And then you will either lick your wounds and move on, or wait and try again.
I wrote this a few days ago but this morning I
was thinking about it again and wondering if this post would be any way helpful
to my shy querent. So I thought I’d ask my oracles for some clarification. iPod
oracle said this: except, hmm, it's not on YouTube... and this...and, grrr, neither is Kathryn Williams, Up North.
But this is:
"Does it really matter,
As long as you're not afraid to feel?"
And that's the bottom line, really. You have to feel. Or you're dead.
