Writing Through Rejection

Sometimes rejection never comes from a publisher. It begins much earlier, in the private conversations writers have with themselves.

Is my writing good enough? Who would want to read this? How can I compete when I don’t have thousands of followers? And what happens if my work actually does get published and people I know begin reading it?

In Episode 18 of Write… Reflect… Reimagine®, Dr. Vilma Luz Cabán explores the fears that can quietly keep writers from moving their work forward. She considers the difference between a manuscript that still needs development and a writer who has begun questioning their own ability, the pressure to build a social media platform, the vulnerability that comes with becoming visible, and why a rejection from one publisher should never become a verdict on the value of the work.

The episode also looks beyond traditional publishing and explores the possibilities of independent publishing, including the importance of finding a publishing relationship that helps authors develop, publish, promote, and connect their books with readers.

If you have been revising the same manuscript, wondering whether you are ready, or convincing yourself that there may not be a place for your work, this conversation invites you to examine what is really holding you back.

Your manuscript may need work.

Your publishing path may change.

But fear does not have to make the decision for you.

Explore Casa de María Publisher and our independent publishing model at casademariapublisher.com.

#WritingCommunity #AspiringAuthor #WritingMotivation #IndependentPublishing #PodcastForWriters

Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Casa de Maria. This is a space for writers, artists, and cultural storytellers who believe that our words carry memory, meaning, and responsibility. Here we gather to reflect on craft, honored lived experience, and explore ethical pathways to publishing and creative growth. I am your host, Dr. Vilma Luz Caban, founder of Casa de Maria Publisher. And I am grateful you are here. Welcome back to Write, Reflect, Reimagine.

Speaker 0:50

Sometimes rejection never comes from a publisher at all. It can begin much earlier in the private conversations we have with ourselves before the words ever reach the page. It tells us that the idea is too small, that it's strange, perhaps too personal, too familiar, or simply not good enough. Because that doubt is coming from inside us, at times it can be hard to recognize it for what it is. We mistake fear for judgment. We mistake hesitation for truth. And before anyone else has the opportunity to respond to the work, we begin editing ourselves out of it. I've seen how this kind of negative self-talk can turn into self-rejection. In some of my writing consultations with aspiring authors, a writer begins talking about the book they want to write, or perhaps the manuscript they've been carrying around for years. There is usually excitement at first, and they tell me where the idea came from. They begin to describe a scene that they can't stop thinking about, or a family history they want to preserve. Perhaps it's a question that has followed them for years, or a piece of their own life that finally they feel ready to examine. Then the conversation changes and their voice becomes a little quieter. They begin qualifying what they just told me. Well, I don't know if it's good enough. Or they'll say, I'm not sure anyone would want this. I don't really have a large social media following. I'm not one of those people with thousands of followers on TikTok. And I watch this thing that felt expansive a few minutes earlier begin to shrink. And that is one of the difficulties of moving from writing privately to thinking about publication. The minute we imagine other people seeing the work, all kinds of questions enter the room. Will someone reject it? Will they understand what I was trying to say? Will someone I know recognize themselves? And what happens if a stranger reads something deeply personal and sees it differently than I do? There is an excitement in that great possibility, but boy, is there also vulnerability. We tend to talk about rejection as though it's a straightforward transaction. You know, you submit something, someone says no, you move on. Well, writers know it rarely feels that simple. A rejection can leave you wondering what exactly was rejected. Was it the manuscript? Was it the timing, the fit, or was it you, the writer? A rejection can be hard to interpret, and you may know only that someone said no, but your mind can quickly fill in the rest and stay there long enough, and that question can become more personal. Maybe I was never supposed to share this writing into the world. That is the kind of rejection I worry most about. Not the letter from the agent or the email from the editor. I mean, the rejection that happens before the manuscript even leaves the private centum of the writing space. You decide it probably isn't ready. So the query never gets sent. A submission deadline passes, and you just keep revising the same number of pages because revising is something that you can control. Sometimes revision is exactly what a manuscript needs, but sometimes perfectionism becomes a very respectable hiding place. And from the outside, it still looks like writing. You're editing, rearranging, improving, yet after a while, the manuscript can become a room that you keep redecorating because stepping outside of it feels a little more dangerous. And beneath all of that is one of the most common questions I hear. Well, what if my writing really isn't good enough? I think writers deserve a more useful answer than, of course it is. Just believe in yourself. Now, writing can need work, yes. And a manuscript may have problems within the structure. Maybe a chapter may wander a bit, or a character may not feel fully developed. A memoir can circle around its most important material without ever entering it. Maybe it's that poem that's not reaching forward to something that has not yet been found. Now, none of that is unusual. That happens a lot for writers. And with a couple of reiterations and the lens of an editor, most of that draft can really be fleshed out into something ready for press. Now, a draft is not a verdict on the person who wrote it. I repeat, your writer's draft is not a verdict of the person that wrote it. It's material. And I sometimes think about a sculptor looking at a piece of stone. The form perhaps is not very obvious at the beginning. And that artist works with what's there, maybe removing some sh some material, some mass, and then shaping some other sections and slowly discovering that what seemed important at first was not actually the center of that sculpture, that piece. Writing develops in the same way. The useful question is not what is wrong with me? It's what does this manuscript need? And that question gives us something to work with. Maybe the structure needs a little attention. Maybe the opening is not really captivating. Maybe there is a part of the narrative where it has great momentum and then the energy drops. Maybe the writer now understands something that they cannot see when they began writing this piece. And those are craft questions. And trust me, they can be addressed. The danger comes when a writer begins treating every weakness in the manuscript as evidence of a weakness in themselves as a writer. A difficult chapter becomes proof that they're not talented, or maybe that one rejection that they had becomes confirmation that they were too foolish to try and not ready. And that makes it very hard to return to the page with curiosity. And lately, there's another layer to this anxiety. Writers are looking at the publishing world and wondering whether they can compete in it at all. They see authors with enormous social media followings, they see polished book announcements, they see viral videos, packed comment sections, and people who seem to have built a readership before the book has even appeared. Then they look at their own account, and maybe they might have 500 followers. Maybe they post once in a while. Maybe their TikTok is not a part of the life at all, right? And suddenly a person who is thinking about character, language, memory, or structure is now fixated on the numbers. Now, I understand that platforms matter. I don't think it helps writers to pretend otherwise. Publishing is a business, and publishers think about an audience, visibility, positioning, and sales. But numbers can become very dangerous when we allow them to tell us more than they actually know. A follower cannot tell you whether the work has value. It cannot tell you whether there's a reader somewhere who's been waiting for precisely what you are writing. It also cannot tell you all the ways an audience might eventually form thereafter. So a writer may have relationships in a professional field already, in schools, in cultural organizations, in advocacy spaces, or in a particular sect of community. Another writer may be a strong public speaker. Someone else may have spent 20 years developing expertise in a subject matter. And another writer simply may have written an excellent book and be willing to learn what happens after the writing is finished. We've become so accustomed to seeing audiences measured in enormous numbers that we forget how readership often develops. Developing a readership happens very quietly. A reading, maybe where 20 people show up, a librarian who recommends the book. Maybe it's someone who gives a copy to a friend, a professor who puts it on a syllabus. It's a community organization that invites the author to speak about the book. None of those moments may go viral, but they still matter. An audience does not always arrive as a stadium full of people waiting for the book. Sometimes you build it one chair at a time. And that is also why I encourage writers to stop thinking about publishing as though there's one legitimate entrance. Traditional publishing is one pathway. And for some writers, that is exactly the right one. But it's not the only place where serious writing finds its way into the world. There are independent presses, small presses, university presses, self-publishing, anthologies, literary journals, and other models that offer very different kinds of relationships between writers and publishers. The more useful question may be: what kind of publishing relationship does my book need? This is where independent publishing can be especially meaningful. A strong independent publisher may be able to work much more closely with a writer, particularly someone who is learning how to move from private writing into public authorship. Now, because producing a book is only one part of publishing, we know that books also have to travel and it has to find its readers. And that might happen through a bookstore event, a library event, a classroom invitation, attending a conference, being part of a community organization, being part of a cultural center event, partaking in literary programs, or through public conversation. Sometimes it happens because one person introduces the book to another person who would never have encountered it through an advertisement. Now, the right publishing relationship can help an author think about all of that, not simply how do we produce your book, but what happens to this book once it exists? That may include editorial support and production, but could it also include helping writers become comfortable talking about their work, thinking about their audience, participating in public events, and building relationships around the book. I hear writers say, I don't know how to promote myself. I understand the discomfort, I truly get it behind that sentence. But most people do not begin writing a memoir or a poetry collection or a novel because they dreamed of becoming their own marketing department. That's not everyone's forte. But promotion does not have to mean performing a version of yourself that you don't recognize either. You can begin with something much simpler. Maybe you can talk about why you wrote the book. Maybe you can say, have a meaningful conversation with readers about the questions that were behind the development of that book. Can you speak with a librarian, participate in a panel discussion, maybe visit a bookstore, write an essay that's connected to the subject or material of your book, maybe share a passage that opens a larger conversation. Guess what? That's promotion too. And you're not necessarily standing in the middle of a crowd instant yelling, hey, look at me. My book's out. What you're doing is you're helping people find the work. I like to think about visibility less as a spotlight and more as illuminating what happens very gradually for a writer. One connection leads to another, and then the author becomes a little more comfortable talking about the work, and the book begins moving through places and relationships that make sense for it. It may never create one spectacular viral moment, and that's okay. It can still create a meaningful relationship between you and the reader. And that is a readership. Of course, there's another side to all of this, you know, and sometimes writers spend way too much time worrying that nobody will publish the book that they are surprised that they have, right? They're surprised by that fear that appears when they begin to imagine themselves someone actually saying yes to their work. Publication means being seen. I get it. For a memorist, a poet, writer whose work is growing out of lived experience, that can be very complicated. While the work is private, you know exactly where it is. You close the laptop, you put the notebook away, and you decide who gets to read it. Publication kind of changes that relationship a little bit, and your words begin traveling ahead of you, and sometimes without you. I get it. A person in another city might be reading your book while you're making a dinner, and someone may underline the sentence that you, oh my God, you almost delete it. A family member may recognize an event, or perhaps a stranger may interpret something differently than the way you had intended to share it. Once the book is out there, all those possibilities exist at the same time. I get it. And for some writers, oof, there is fear. There's fear. And this is fear. I get it. But guess what? Fear is not failure, right? It's about exposure. It's about getting the work out. And I think we should take that seriously. Preparing for publication is not only about preparing a manuscript, it's some mental preparation for what's involved in a larger work. You have to decide what you are willing to make public and what still belongs to you. You need to think about those boundaries. If someone interviews you about the book, are there parts of your life that you're simply not ready to discuss? Factor that in. Are there people whose privacy you need to also consider? Is there something in the manuscript that genuinely belongs there, or are you just including it because you've convinced yourself that being honest means revealing everything? Honesty does not require complete exposure. A writer can be truthful, but still set very healthy boundaries. Readers may have access to the book, but they do not automatically have access to every part of the person who wrote it. And then there is rejection itself, right? Ooh, ouch, it hurts. There's no reason to make it prettier than this. You know, no one wants to feel like your work doesn't feel right enough. When you've spent months or years on a manuscript, an email saying the work is not the right fit can feel really hard. It's like carrying a little carefully wrapped package a very long distance and having someone inspect the label without even opening it. The mistake is assuming that every rejection tells you exactly what the work is worth. And it doesn't. Maybe the publisher already has something similar. Maybe an editor has no idea how to position the book out of the market. Maybe their list is full. Maybe the timing is wrong, or maybe the manuscript generally just needs tweaking. Maybe that particular reader simply just didn't connect with your book. And we often ask a rejection to provide information that it doesn't actually contain. So a closed door is still only a door. You can knock somewhere else. And you may return with that manuscript and discover something that you missed and address it. You may eventually realize you were standing in front of the wrong space, projecting your biggest fears. A path can change, and the work still has meaning. And that's why in my consultations, I am less interested in telling writers that they should not be afraid than I am helping them figure out exactly what they're afraid of. See, the problem isn't craft. The problem is sometimes our self-editing and getting in our own way. If the publishing industry feels mysterious or intimidating, then let's learn more about it. And if you're worried about platforms, think realistically about your readership and the relationships that it'll take to build that readership. Fear is very real, but we have to expose the fear and it takes away the power. Once that fear is separated from your work, it's so much easier to examine what you need to do as a writer to get past that fear. And you're going to discover that that manuscript genuinely just needs maybe a little more time, a little more tricking, and then you're ready to put it out in the world. Maybe traditional publishing is going to be your path. Maybe it's an independent publisher that can offer the relationship you need. Maybe you realize that promotion is not something that you're naturally comfortable with, but it's something that you're willing to learn. So pay attention. Stay curious. Find people who can help you with this more clearly. Learn about the different ways that books enter the world and resist using someone else's career as some kind of measuring stick to your own writer's life. I encourage you to take out that manuscript, revamp it, get it ready, prepare a conversation with a friend who can read it, and have that talk about how to reach out to a publisher. Casa de Maria Publisher is here, ready for you. And if this conversation has you thinking differently, I invite you to explore more about our independent publishing house based in Puerto Rico. Examine our model that's built around working closely with the writers as they move from manuscript development through publication and getting that work out there to reach your readers. Explore independent publishing. Learn how different publishers work with their authors. Pay attention. And if this is something that interests you, we encourage you to explore our publishing models at Casa de MariaPublisher.com. You may not know yet where your manuscript belongs. You don't have to. Sometimes the next step is simply allowing yourself to find out and turn off that self-rejection and activate that self-acceptance.

Speaker 1 22:37

Thank you for spending this time with me. If today's conversation resonated, I invite you to explore our free webinars, writing retreats in Puerto Rico, and our curated anthologies at Casa de Maria Publisher. Your voice matters. Your story deserves care. Until next time, write with intention and courage. Pen your passion. Publish your promise at Casa de Maria Publisher.