Week 1: The Rejection Letter Olympics
November 21, 2008 by Jenny Cromie
Filed under Jobs
Everyone needs an accountability partner, so I thought I’d start a weekly feature here called The Rejection Letter Olympics.
Yep, you read that right. How many rejection letters or “no thank you” e-mails can you rack up in a week?
I’m basing this weekly challenge on the very sage advice of Thomas Watson, founder of IBM: “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.”
Along the same lines, someone early on in my freelance career told me that every “no” gets you closer to a “yes.” So taking that theory to heart, I am setting up this challenge to reward you for sticking your freelance neck out there and risking rejection. Because eventually (possibly much sooner than you think) you will get a “yes.”
So here’s how the Rejection Letter Olympic Challenge works:
- Every Friday, I’ll lob a new weekly challenge your way. There will be fun themes each week (yes, I’ll take suggestions).
- If you want to participate, leave your name below in the comment field to let me know that you’re game for that week.
- If you choose to accept the challenge, your goal will be to collect as many rejection letters and “no thank you” e-mails that you can gather in one week.
- Throughout the week, please tell us all about your wonderful progress and the good things that start happening for your freelance career as a result of the weekly challenge. Yes, I’m encouraging you to brag about your progress (e.g. “Hey guess what? I received 10 rejection letters this week! Woohoo! And then I received one assignment!”).
- Each rejection letter will be worth 2 points. If you receive an assignment from an editor based on a query or letter of introduction (LOI), give yourself 3 points.
- Lack of response from an editor counts as a rejection only after you follow up with an e-mail and/or phone call (generally after two to three weeks) and get a “no.”
- Each Friday, drop me a line in the comment field below and let me know how many points you racked up for the week (yes, it is the honor system).
- On Dec. 31, I’ll tally all the points, and the top 3 winners will receive mucho kudos from me and your freelance peers. And if you want the exposure, I’ll even feature you in a Q&A here on this blog. Racking up points will get you close to the winner’s circle. But the top three Rejection Letter Olympians will be selected based on a combination of points and success stories (actual assignments and breakthroughs) resulting from the weekly challenges.
And in case you’re wondering—yes, I’ll be doing the challenges along with you. But I promise I’ll let other people win!
Sorry folks—no monetary prizes will be awarded. But if all goes well, you’ll be rewarded with more assignments, more recognition, and ultimately, more money from some new well-paying clients.
So how about it? Are you ready to get started?
This week’s theme: Feel the fear and send the query anyway!
This week, send at least one query or LOI to a publication or client that you’ve been afraid to approach or that you’ve always thought you’d never be able to break into. That’s it! Simple, right?
So leave your name below and start racking up those points!
Best,
Jenny
Photo credit: smlp.co.uk, Flickr
I’m game!
Excellent! Hopefully we’ll get more joiners. But if not, we’ll have a nice friendly competition between the two of us. :-)
Please note that I clarified above about how to handle a lack of response from an editor.
If you feel comfortable, let me know how you’re doing throughout the week or if you have any questions.
Thanks for joining up Katrina!
Jenny, I love this! I have a bunch of copywriting projects that just arrived, so I may not be able to partake this time (plus, this time of year, I’m finding that even editors I’ve worked with before are too busy to answer emails). This sounds a bit like Kristen King’s Query Challenge from a few years ago. THAT was a lot of fun!
I’ll play. Thank you for coming up with this, Jenny.
Hopefully, I won’t be playing until the end of the year, but if I am, watch out.
Heather
I’m in, although week after next I’ll be away from the office in the South Island of New Zealand. Don’t hate me because my travel is beautiful…
what if they don’t reply? do we consider it a ‘no’?
Hi Marsha, thank you for your question. I added this above yesterday:
Lack of response from an editor counts as a rejection only after you follow up with an e-mail and/or phone call (generally after two to three weeks) and get a “no.”
Let me know if you have any more questions!
Jenny
Count me in. This sounds fun! (And talk about taking the sting out of rejection — 2 points!!) :)
Jenny
Count me in! I’m going to stop reading my Facebook and my blog comments and my email, and get started right now. I’m cold-emailing and cold-calling businesses this week. My goal is 10 per day, so I hope to get at least 30 rejections this week. Cross your fingers!
Hi Jennifer and Theda! Welcome aboard!
I’m down, friends. And I’m gunnin’ to win. It’s on, fools!
Dear Jenny,
I feel a bit lost. I love to write but have very little time in my schedule for writing. The only time I have actually written is eons ago in college, except a recent short story. To be even remotely successful, I have heard that a writer should have maybe a dozen articles, poems, short stories, etc. floating around the desks of editors.
My question is this: Pretend you are me (I only have time to write on Sundays). How would you begin to “break into the business?” Would you just randomly write anything? How do I know what a magazine is looking for at the time I am submitting? I don’t even know who to pick as a target for submission. I love to write fiction but I don’t think there is a terribly big market for it, or is there?
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.
Welcome aboard Dan!
Vicky, I think the first thing I’d recommend would be deciding on the direction that you want to take with your writing. Take some time to sit down and write down some dream goals—very specific things that you would love to do with your writing. Then pick one of those goals, break it down into smaller tasks, and start working toward that goal.
I also would recommend joining an online site like mediabistro.com, which has a wealth of information geared toward people in the media and publishing industries.
If you decide you want to learn how to write a query for a magazine article, you could take an online course. Linda Formicelli and Diana Burrell offer some excellent courses on their Web site, the Renegade Writer (http://therenegadewriter.com/), that might help you get started in the right direction. Mediabistro.com also offers helpful courses on a variety of writing-related topics as well.
You mention that you only have Sundays to write. I think that with the right focus, it’s possible to accomplish a lot in short increments of time. Writing is a discipline, and if you set aside time for it on a regular basis, that’s half the battle. The key is to make it a habit. For example, if you decided to write 5 pages a day for the next 30 days, you would have 150 pages at the end of the month—about the size of a novella.
You also could start each morning a little earlier and set aside 15 to 30 minutes for your writing. I know you said you only have Sundays, but a lot of writing can be accomplished in 15–30 minutes!
Dear Jenny,
Thank you very much for your enlightening reply. I will follow those steps you advised, including the fifteen to thirty minutes in the wee a.m. You have also mentioned goals. You are absolutely right. I need to focus on what it is that I want. Knowing my goal will provide me with an anchor so I won’t be floating around without direction.
Thank you again for your helpful answer. It gave me lots to think about and lots to do.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Vicky
I’m game! And hoping to lose … or is that win?
You’re welcome Vicky!
Yay Amanda! Good to see you here!
I just found this and I am still going to try in 2009
How can I join this creative challenge? I know that jamming the market with queries works and being in competition to do so is THE thing to get me in ’send’ mode.
Judi