How To Contfront Life's Rejections (article) by Lillian Sara Cauldwell on AuthorsDen

Receiving rejection slips are not life threatening, they are life reversive. Type or Paste your work here... How to Confront Life's Rejections I have written for over twelve years. Next to other professional writers, that's not a very long time span. However, we all receive them, those rejections from life or work. You hear horror stories: "I have enough rejection slips to paper my walls; Rejection slips and I go together, hand in hand. It's a measurement of my failure level; I can't believe I got fired for that!" The lines of rejection notices range from seldom or random to hot and heavy. (rejection slips, not sex.) I find when I receive my rejection slips, I tend to pull back from my anger, tears of frustration, and feeling that I lost my best friend. Whatever kind of rejection you receive, there are other ways of handling it rather than eat a gallon of ice cream or Oreo cookies, get drunk, get high, scream at your kids or spouse, ram the car into the tree or shaking your fist at the heavens. There are ways to deal with it, if you think about it before stamping your feet or throwing books across the room. What are they? 1. Do Exercises. Walk it off, hit the treadmill or exercise machine. Run around the yard. Throw shadow punches in space. Go into an interior room and scream your guts out. 2. It's Not Personal. Despite what you may think, publishers, agents, bosses, and other types of organizations are not out there to get you. If you DON'T read the submission guidelines to submit your poem, novel, short story, article or essay, chances are that you will never hear from them again, or worse, they'll send your material back with a rejection slip. If you don't pay attention to why the publisher, agent or boss rejects you, you should not immediately assume that you're a jerk, can't write, feel 2 inches tall. I have felt that way every time I receive one. My husband tells me: "At least you got your manuscript back. It can't be all that bad." Encouragement is wonderful and it sometimes help, but it doesn't take away the pain or terror that I'm not a writer. Who am I kidding? 3. Position Yourself in front of the mirror. Yeah, take a good look. That's you and you know what? You've got a lot of guts submitting your work to a stranger. One whom you instantly trust and waits for their thumbs up or down slips of paper. Remember, they don't know you or your ability to write. All they've got is your cover letter and bio and your submission. Maybe they'll ask for a synopsis. The job for the publisher or agent is to read what you've written and then make an educated choice. Does your writing grab them? Is it different from the other similar genre books or short stories sitting in dust and covered with cobwebs at Barnes and Noble? I can't stress it enough. Don't take it personally. They're doing their job the way you do yours, by writing, submitting, and holding your breath until your baby returns in the mail safely with an acceptance slip. 4. Keep telling yourself that you can write, but it takes time. I have had two books printed. One was a nonfiction book, but the distributor, Atrium, went belly-up and the book was lost-in-space. The second book I had published was from a different type of publisher. What made me go that route? I was desperate. I sent out that fiction book for six months, rejections from them all. On a rebound, I found this publisher on the web. Instead of doing the research I needed to do on this company, I went ahead. NO! NO! NO! When you get rejected stay away from the computer until your sane mind comes back, and not until then. Don't submit to publishers or agents who are in the lower levels of Science Fiction Writers of America. You can check these companies and folks out in the Preditors and Editors Section. Go to: http://www.sfwa.org. From there, find the Preditor and Editor Section. From there, go to: http://www.agentresearch.com. Go to the evaluation page and put in the name of the agent or the publisher. THIS SERVICE IS FREE! Make use of it. The book,article, short story, poem, essay you save might be your own. 5. Learn how to handle rejection. Rejection is STRESS. You've got enought stress, annoyance, frustration, hectic times with your spouse or with your family including relatives and moochers. When you're hit with a form of rejection, let your mind heal you. It doesn't take much thought. Plaster a smile on your face and accept it instead of struggling. You need that energy for other jobs or submissions to e-zines, magazines, e-publishers, Print On Demand, self-publish, chapbooks, publishers and agents. Time is an eternity. If you have a goal, stick with it to its logical conclusion. Don't abort in the middle. Rejection is as Rejection was. Everyone in their term of life, whether writing or not, suffers setbacks. If you want something badly, you take the necessary steps to achieve it. Rejection can break you or inspire you to go further a field and seek other venues to pursue with your writing.
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