Rejection Letter Olympics: Crossing the Finish Line

Good Friday morning Rejection Letter Olympians!

Congratulations! You have finally reached the finish line!

Whether you participated for one week or all five, I hope that the competition helped jumpstart your query- and LOI-writing process. And it’s also my hope that the competition took a little bit of the sting out of the rejections you might have received from editors and potential clients during the challenge. As I’ve mentioned here before, landing assignments is really a numbers game, and rejection is just part of the process. Every “no” gets you closer to a “yes.”

So go ahead and pat yourself on the back for every rejection you’ve received because it means that you had enough courage to risk rejection and send your ideas out into the world anyway.

I’m convinced that there are thousands of stories, books, and other great works out there that could be best-sellers or well-read pieces—except for the fact that people don’t send them out for fear of rejection or because they get discouraged after receiving the first, second, or third “no.”

The writers who dust themselves off and keep sending out queries, LOIs, and proposals regardless of the number of rejections they receive are the ones who get published. They’re the ones who have the best-selling books on the Barnes & Noble shelves and the cover stories and bylines in the big national magazines. Most people just see the bylines and writing credits—they don’t see all the rejections it took to get the book contracts or land those prestigious assignments.

So feel good about your rejections too! If you’re like most successful writers I know, you will get more rejections than assignments. And if you’re not getting rejection letters, my guess is that you’re not getting published.

I’m guessing that the holidays probably got in the way of racking up points for some people this week, but go ahead and tally up what you’ve accumulated anyway. Please give yourself 2 points for each rejection, and 3 points for each assignment, and log your totals in the comments section below.

And if you participated in the last five weeks or just a couple of those weeks, please also include the total number of points you accumulated for the weeks that you participated. I’ll announce three winners after the first of the year.

Congratulations again everyone!

Photo credit: Chris Kantos (Flickr)