It's All Fodder

It’s easy to get depressed when you get rejection letter after rejection letter. Knowing that it’s part of the process helps a little, but doesn’t take away the sting completely. And there are other parts of the writing process that are even more painful. Giving up on a manuscript and putting it aside. Rewriting a manuscript so that large chunks you love are gone. Realizing that a manuscript you’re working on is derivative—or that something far too similar has just been published by someone you never heard of.

When you are feeling like this sucks and there is no point in writing another word, I hope it’s helpful to hear things like this:

1. This is all going to make a great book someday. Either a book about a writer or a book about someone who is rejected in ways that are like a writer.

2. I’m making that editor into the villain in my next manuscript.

3. The people who rejected me are going to wish they hadn’t. (Sometimes this actually does happen.)

4. Anger and despair are just more fuel for the creative fire.

5. Now that I’ve suffered, I really get what other artists are talking about.

6. I can write characters who have been through bad stuff a lot better now.

7. If I can figure out why people do these things that hurt me, I can write better villains. And make them suffer even more when I take away everything they care about. Mwahahah!

8. I’m going to devise a fantasy world in which things like this don’t happen. And I’m going to spend a lot of time worldbuilding to show how it can be done.

9. I get to the god of my next novel and I will make all the people I create suffer the way I’ve suffered, and it will be delicious!

10. I am going to work on my inspiring talk on how to keep working hard, no matter how bad the rejection gets, and aspiring authors are going to one day give me standing ovations.