Freelance Writers and Rejection!
March 30, 2008 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
If you’re going to have a successful freelance writing career, you’re writing is going to be rejected. It happens to us all, and somehow we find a way to deal with it.
Leadership Turn has posted some rejections you may find surprising. Take a look then use them to encourage yourself.
You may also want to read After Rejection – The Next Step in Freelance Writing.
Has your writing ever been rejected? Tell us about it.
Write well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.
I always remind myself that experts are people who believe enough in their own opinion that they’ll commit and stick to it in public. That doesn’t make them right, it makes it their opinion!
Good point Miki, thanks
Rejection is, just as Anne posted, part of the freelancer’s career.
Yes, in 16 plus years of writing I have received rejection slips.
Luckily, early on in my Freelancing career I learned to distance myself from most of my writings. In the very beginning I took the rejections personally. (Thank goodness it only lasted a very short time.) Then I learned that editors and publishers know what they want and if we do not deliver what they have conjured up in their own mind’s eye… well than, our work, not us, but our work, is rejected.
That seems to be a difficult thing for new writers to wrap their minds around. Theses rejections are not personal. They are a rejection of the piece of wordplay that is sitting in front of an editor or publisher. It is not a rejection of you as a person.
I remember taking a rejection too personal once.
I had ventured out of my safety zone and tried my hand at a short story. When the reviews came back in I was brought to tears. The shock came when someone said, “Is that woman really that weak or is that man really that much of a cad?” okay, I had to answer yes to both questions, because it was the truth … the reason it hurt was because it was more then a short short. It was the first chapter to my manuscript and it was an autobiographical chapter.
That was 6 years ago and although it hurt for a little while I realized that if that was the reader’s response then I had fully gotten across the characters I had intended upon introducing to the readers. I learned so well that when I submitted my romance novella manuscript to a publisher who liked it … I took it on the cuff when here editor rejected it.
There is always another editing and another submission for it.
I’ve been rejected many times, but haven’t gotten any silly or weird responses. In my best rejection letter, the editor said she liked my voice.
I think I’d rather get a rejection than all of those editors who don’t reply at all. That stinks.