Episode 11 - How to Deal with Rejection as a Writer

Recorded on November 15th, 2022

In this episode, I first talk about my surgery—upcoming at the time of recording the episode and far behind me as I post the episode. Then I get into rejections: how to deal with the emotions that come with them, how to keep on going despite them, and the #1 mental shift that completely changed how I handle rejection (trust me, it works!)

Mentioned in this episode:

• Follow me on Instragram
• Follow me on TikTok
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Manuscript Academy
• The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Podcast
• Print Run Podcast

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to LeftyO Bay's Writing Podcast, where I share with vulnerability and positivity my journey towards making all of my writing dreams come true. I hope you learn with me as I go from the things that go well and what doesn't go so well. But mainly I wish it inspires you to pursue your own writing dreams. Now let's begin. Hello writers! Before we get into the real episode, I needed to do a little note at the beginning because what you're about to listen, I've recorded on November 15th. Yes, and as I'm recording this note right now, it is March 21st. So there has been a long time in between the recording of the episode you're about to listen to and the editing and the releasing of the episode. And I needed to explain to you why. So in the episode, I'm going to talk about surgery that was upcoming at the time. So I had the surgery and there was some minor complication, not too big, which I'm super grateful for, but still there was complication, which meant that the month of December, January, and February, to be honest, were horrible. It was the worst months of my life on a physical level, which I'm going to get more into in the next episode. But for now, I just wanted to let you know why it had been so long since I last released an episode and also give you some context because you know, in the update part of the episode, and when I'm talking about the surgery and everything, like it's not up to date at all. So I really felt like this episode needed like an a note before just to explain that to you. So I don't know when I will be able to record the next episode because even though I'm now doing like thousand times better and I'm really close to being back to completely normal, I'm still adjusting to getting back to my day job and getting back to this writing routine, and I still don't have like all of my energy back, so I'm still like navigating all of this, but I'm closer to being back to normal than I've been like for the last three months. So there will be a new episode soon. Like it will not take another three months for you to get a new episode, but for now is the episode that I recorded on November 15th before my surgery, and it's about rejection, and I think it's really good, so I hope you will enjoy it. Hello, writers, thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to be recording today because it's been a month since I last recorded. So, as I said in previous episode, I'm trying to really be more conscious of my time and not putting too much pressure on myself and really respecting like my sleep and my rhythm and everything, and it's been quite the month, so that's why I wasn't able to record before today. But I am here, I'm super excited about this subject. The topic for today is how to deal with rejection as a writer. And if you intend to follow the traditional path to writing, so trying to submit either to agents, small presses, or even to publish your short story and markets, you will be confronted with rejection, and it's hard, it's hard to handle. So that's why I wanted to talk about this today. Because I've grown a lot since I've begun submitting my stories, and I just wanted to share what I've learned from like almost 10 years now of submitting short stories to market, and as I am close to begin querying, this is also like a reminder to myself because to be honest, it scares me to start querying, to get rejection on a book that I've been working on for now more than three years. It scares me a lot. So this episode is also a way for me to ensure that I'm reminding myself of my own tips for how to handle rejection. So that's coming up in the topic part of the episode. But before we get into my update, I just wanted to give a quick thank you to two amazing listeners. The first is Michelle. She left the first review ever on Apple Podcast for the for the podcast. So thank you so much, Michelle. The review was amazing. I was so happy. A five-star review. Uh, so that really made my day when I received it. And I think I saw it the same day that I got a reduction, so it really helped me to feel better about myself. So thank you so much, Michelle. If you like the podcast, you know, if you take the time to write a review, like uh it really helps people to discover the podcast. So I really appreciate you for taking the time to leave a review. There is also a new supporter on Ko-Fi for the podcast. So I want to say thank you to Mel for becoming a supporter there. You can be a supporter of the podcast either on Ko-Fi or Patreon. I have both pages, whichever one you like. You can be a monthly supporter on both those platforms, and you can also support one time off on Ko-Fi. So whichever you preferred. As always, the link is in the show notes if you want to support the podcast. This shows me you enjoy the podcast and it gets me closer to being able to deliver an episode to you every single week, which I would love to be able to do. So thank you so much, Mal, for supporting the podcast financially. So, like I said, it's been a month and it's been quite the month since I last recorded an episode for the podcast. So, first, not long after I recorded the last episode, I got into a case of writer blocks with my novel, with the line editing of my novel. Yes, writer block exists, and I'm going to do a whole episode about it at some point, but I had it like a couple of weeks ago. And so the form that it took for me was really like that in the morning I was still waking up at four to go and write, but I had like a major case of resistance, and I just did not want it to work on it. I felt really discouraged by it, and you know, it was a struggle to sit down and continue doing the line editing. I was feeling like I didn't have it at time again, like it was maybe taking too long. Yeah, it was it was all of it together, and I just didn't felt like working on it anymore. Uh, so what I decided to do was that I had this horror short story that was sitting in my computer waiting for me to do another round of editing on it before I could submit it to new markets. So I had already submitted this short story to three different markets who had all rejected it. And I wanted to submit it to new markets, but it was above 5,000 words long, and those markets needed it to be shorter than that. So I needed to cut basically about 500 words that I needed to cut in order to be able to submit it to more magazines. So, and also there was an amazing friend of mine who I met at the Aura Writers Association who had done a line editing of the story for me when I sent it to him, and his suggestion was just brilliant, so I wanted to apply them too. So, and I also had sent it to another friend of mine who he's got lots of story published in the short story market, he's been a first reader for some, so he has lots of knowledge about specifically how to sell a short fiction. So he had given me feedback too about what I could do to like optimize the story to give it a better chance of being accepted in the short market. So I wanted to apply both of their comments to the story and cut as many words as I could. But like this was sitting in my computer for months now because I wanted really to prioritize the novel, and I was waiting basically for the time when it would feel right to go back to this short story because I really, really love it. It's a post-apocalyptic story, but with ghosts instead of zombies, and uh yeah, I I really really love the story. So I wanted to to you know go back to it, find it a market, and because I was having writers block on my novel, I said, okay, might as well go back to the to the short story and still use this writing time. Like I still had the habit of getting up in the morning and and write. So that's why habits are so strong when you're feeling resistance, when you're feeling like you can no longer write basically on the project that you're working. If you have the habit of writing, even if it's hard for one project, you will be able maybe to pivot to another. So that's that's what I did. So I finished applying all the comments that my true friends did. One which included picking off the last scene, which made the story better. I also changed the title based on their comments, and I really love my new title, and I caught lots of words. The story is now at 4,900 awards, so it fits with way more market that I can submit it to. So I did that, and then I submitted it to a market that I had lots of hopes for, and it got form rejected. Then I found another market and I submitted it to it, and it got form rejected too. And during that time, I also submitted my science fiction novella, one I wrote like years ago, like even before I started working on my current novel. If you haven't listened to the first episode on my writing journey, go back there and you hear all about all about that novella. It has been rejected too a lot, and because it's a novella, it's hard to place it. So I found a new market that was accepting novella, so I submitted it there. And they have the option of getting the comments that the first reader writes to the editor to tell them what they think about the story. You can see those comments. And they said, like, if you want to see them, we can show them to you, but just know that those aren't meant for you like as constructive criticism, those are really just to let you know how we think and process things. So I wanted to know, so I told them that I wanted to know, and I received those comments, and it was painful, uh, the painful truth. Uh, that like basically it just told me that I have progressed so much as a writer since then, since writing this story. It had been like years since I've reread this story, like I just submitted it without really looking at it. And the dialogues are not strong at the beginning, and they mentioned it. I noticed I was using like dialogue tags said, which is still good, but with every line of dialogue in the first like two pages, which is a big no-no that I know right now that I should not be doing this. So this is something that I could easily edit to make this story stronger. And they mentioned typo. I went back and I didn't spot the typo, but you know, seems like a typos planet. So, um, and they said that the piece was too long for a short story market, and I was like, hmm, like if you don't want a longer piece, just don't be open for them. But anyway, they were kind enough to suggest like other markets that I could possibly send it to for the length. So for that, I'm super grateful that the first reader took the time to write those comments. I was really grateful. There is one that the last time I checked, they were not accepting my exact word count. Uh, it was higher that they considered like novelas, so that's a bummer. I cannot send it there. But the other one, like maybe I could, and they they said that I could send it to small presses, which is something I thought about doing, but I just the time I searched for it, I just didn't find small presses that were open to science fiction novella. So, anyway, all of that hurt basically, so that's why I decided to do this topic this week. I was supposed to do the episode on writing routines. Uh, writing routines would probably be the next episode, but because I had been like knee deep into rejection, I said, you know, why just not talk about this in the podcast? So I'm going to talk about more about all those rejection feels, but yeah, basically in the last month I received three rejection letters. And I did not submit the novella back anywhere. I searched a bit for places, but I decided to put it on ice for now. Just I know that I can make it better because I've grown so much as a writer, but I'm not sure I want to take the time to make it better. So I'm I'm in the space in between the two. Like, is it worth it to go back and edit it? Or was this just like a learning novel, basically, or a learning story that I just needed to write to get better? I still don't know. I still love the story, I love the premise of it. So it's a guy who's lived his whole life on Mars, on a Mars colony with everybody there. He's never had any contact with Earth, like the con the contact has been broken for for many generations, so they don't really know what's happening on Hurt, and he's really lonely, feels misunderstood by everybody on the colony because it's a small community and he's different. And his dream is to go to Hurt. Basically, this has always been his dream. He's obsessed with Hurt, like reading books and watching movies, and he's like, I'm trapped here, and I want to go there because there will be happy. So he creates a plan to escape Mars, but this plan includes like basically putting everybody's safety at risk. So I really still love this premise. I love the story. It was a story that I wrote for myself to tell me that it's okay to have a dream, but if you sacrifice everything else in your life because of a dream, like it will come back and bite you. And basically, this is a cautionary tale. Um, spoiler alert. This is a cautionary tale about yeah, the the cost of being ready to sacrifice everything for a dream that you have. So I still love this story, and now I'm talking about it, and I'm like, of course, I'm going to go back and edit it and try to get it published. And I also think that maybe I could just when I have an agent, I could edit the story with my agent and have them send it to presses. Like maybe this could be like an option. So for now I'm putting it on ice because I still love this story and I still think there is good to it, but I it doesn't feel like a priority for now for me. So that's it for the novella. But for the short story, I found a post-apocalyptic contest online, and since like it's the setup of my story and it's a very specific setup, and I think I've innovated it with the with the ghost thing. Uh, I said, you know, maybe this could be this could be a great like venue for it. So we'll see. I should get news on that by the end of the year. So we'll see how it goes. But I know that we'll find the right market for this story at some point. Just gotta keep trying. Uh then after doing all of this, I finally met with my amazing writing group. So we hadn't met like since the summer virtually because of life getting in the way of all of us, basically. But like I was feeling down with writer blocks, and it just happened that everybody had more time to add some opening in their schedule for us to meet. So we met, and it felt so so so good to talk to them about what I was feeling. And at first it's crazy because my friend at first she was like, I don't think I can really help you with that, you know. But then she she started talking and she really did help me, and they both really helped me. So basically, like talking it out with them about what I was feeling on this writer's blog, I really realized that it was the feeling of not having enough time to write that was really uh bringing me down because I had started going back to my office, so I hadn't gone to the office for some weeks and then I was going back for my day job. And when I go at my office, I need to take uh the bus. So the routine in the morning takes some more time. So basically, like I don't have time to write. I need to get up almost as early as I do when I'm writing, uh, but it's just to allow me to have time to do everything I need to do in time for me to catch my bus. And there's like I live like in uh a small city far from Quebec City, so like there's only two bus that goes from here to to my office, and one bus is way too early with daycare, so I need to drop my kids to daycare and then catch the bus. So basically, I don't have time to write in the mornings when I need to go to the office. So I write in the bus, but it's like uh it gives me like maybe 30 minutes of writing compared to like an hour and a half when I'm not going to the office. So this was really bringing me down the fact that I had less time to write because of this. So my friend she just said, Okay, do you need to write every weekday? So that was basically her first question. I was like, I want to say yes, but truly no. Like, I I really don't need to be writing every weekday. So she said, Okay, so that that's that. And then she said, So, how many days are you staying at home? Like, how many days are you working from home? And I said, three out of five. And she said, Would it just be okay for you to write just those three days out of five? And she was like, You're writing an hour and a half, it gives you like four hours and a half a week. Like, that's a lot, that that's plenty, that's more than enough. And I was like, Yeah, you're right, you're right. It's it's enough. Like, I'm I'm getting all bugged down because my routine is changing, but it doesn't really matter. And she said, like, in the bus on the other day, you can just do other things, like, and you can write a little, but you can still write and still progress and still finish your book with that schedule. Like, it's not your favorite schedule, but you can still do it. So that was really helpful, and that really got me out of of this negative ed space, and I think like the the time I took off also, it helped me to get a bit of distance from the project. So when I got back to it, I was really excited to get back, and also I told myself, you know, I really want to, and I will do a whole episode about this because I think it's too much important, but I really wanted to stop holding on to timelines for my writing journey of when I should be done with what, like, because it doesn't matter. So I will do an entire episode about this because I think it's so important, but there's something freeing about saying, like, I want to finish this book and I don't care when. Like, there's something so freeing about I want to get an agent and I don't care when I get it. I wanna get a book deal and I don't care when I get it. I just want to get it, and I'm open for it happening anytime. Like it's going to be the right time. So I think that sometimes you need a firm deadline to impose for yourself to get you to be productive, but it's not necessarily for everyone. And I know that personally, this type of deadline, when I say okay, I need to be finished by then, it's more stressful than helping. And when I'm actually allowing myself to, you know, I don't care when you finish this, as long as you work on it when you can and you're like disciplined and consistent with the moment that you work on it, it will get done eventually. So don't stress out about when. This is really helpful to me. And really talking with my writing group, this came back. So if you finish it like April of 2023, it doesn't matter, it doesn't change anything. And that's true, like it doesn't change anything. And I was scared, and I told that to my friend, I was scared that at the rhythm I was going with. Byline anything, which was about like a scene a week. I was like, if I keep on going at this space, I will be done in like two years, and I cannot see myself working on this book for another two years. And what my my friend said was like, I don't think it's going to take you two years. You will get some momentum at some point, and it will get going faster. So she was like, Don't stress about this. And she's just so right. So, so yeah, so with all of this in my head, I managed to to get out of the writings block. I got up and I I started working again on the line editing. And with that, I finished uh chapter 12 to chapter 15. Um, so four uh so four chapters in two weeks, which is, you know, faster than what I've been doing before. So I think there is I'm I'm proving it to myself that when I'm not stressed, and I didn't get more time to write in the those two weeks. I just want to put the emphasis on this. Like, I didn't get more time to write, it was the same amount of time I went to the office, like it didn't change, but it was in my mind, all of it was mindset. Um, so yeah. If you don't have amazing writer friends and amazing writing groups like me, uh, go back and listen to episode three. I tell you everything about how to find those people and have them in your life and why they are so important. And that was a case again of me meeting my friends who got it, and they helped me so much. So um, you need those people in your life, and you can have them no matter where you live, you don't have to meet these people in person, like my friends, like we are all like hours of planes away from one another, and it doesn't matter. Like, we talk over on Discord, we made a channel and we talk there, and so yeah, really make yourself the gift of having writer friends who have your back. This is so important. Um, and also my friends told me when I was like feeling really down about my story, um, that my story was good and that I would find a place for it to be published, and this is important, but more to that uh in the topic part of the episode. And then I got an amazing, amazing news. So I think I mentioned it. I don't remember in which episode, but I'm I was waiting on a surgery and I got my date for the surgery. I'm recording this. We are the 15th of November, so on the 17th of uh November, I'm getting my surgery. I've been waiting for like a year and a half for the surgery, and it's it's a positive surgery, so I have uh stoma because I had ulcerative coloursis. Sorry if I'm pronouncing everything not right, uh, those are not words I use often in English. So I had this chronic disease, and my colon basically decided to give up, which was hard and horrible at the time, but with like some distance is the best thing that happened to me because I'm no longer sick. I no longer have my chronic illness, so it's like just amazing. But I have the bag at the moment, the poo bag, which has been hard at some part, but globally it's been like really making my life better and easier. But I'm on my way to having a G pouch, which I'm so grateful that I can have. Uh, but it needs two more surgery for me to get it. And at the end of those two surgery, I will no longer have the bag, and I will just go to the toilet like everybody else. So uh I'm really excited about this for just like the quality of life it will give me even more. Like I have a lot right now of quality of life, but I will have more, and it's just like less managing everything like with the bag. It's a lot of being sure you have all the equipment on time and changing it and everything. So um, yeah, it's uh it's better than being sick, but it's still like not like the best. So I'm really, really excited about this. I'm just grateful that right now, at this moment, I'm getting the surgery finally, and that we're moving on to the next step. And with this, would come will come a sick leave. So I'm going to be able to rest. Like, if you listened to past episode, you know how much I was craving rest because of the crazy routine I imposed on myself. Uh because I just love this whole writing thing so much. But yeah, I will be able to rest to recover from the surgery, of course. So rest will be a priority. But I'm hoping that I can squeeze in uh maybe more podcast episodes during my sick leave, just because I will have the time to both rest and do the episode. And I'm I think I will do some writing during the sick leave too. But again, I will really listen to myself and really prioritize the rest on top of like everything else. And the kids are older now, so they will go to daycare, so I will really have my days to rest. When I had the first surgery to remove my colon, I had a six-month-old baby that I could not pick up because of the surgery. So, like, we are so lucky to have a support system around us. So my mom came over, my partner's mom came over. We had lots of help to help deal with take care of the baby while I was recovering, but it's not the same to have like an and especially for me, like I need alone time to rest. Like, it's really important for me to be alone to really rest. So, even though we had help, like it was not the most effective recovery that you could have after a major surgery. So, this time around, I will be able to have all the rest that I need, and I'm so freaking grateful for this that I have a job that allows me to take this time off and still have a very like decent pay. Yes, it's not as much as I normally do, but it's still like a lot, so I'm super grateful for that. I will not be getting up at four o'clock in the morning, rest assured. I will get up still before the kids because it just it just makes me feel good to wake up before the kids. I can wake up slow, brew my coffee, take my time with everything, so I'm relaxed when the kids get up. Like I'm not feeling super rushed in like everything with the routine with the kids when I had my time in the morning. So I will still get up early because I I love it. It's crazy for me to say this because I I used to be a night hole and not be able to get up early, like this was impossible for me. I'm now like right now. Um I just love getting up early, so it's just it's just weird for me to say this. But I'll still be getting up early, but not to write. I will write during the day. Really, just what feels good and comfortable, but resting will be the priority. But it was such an amazing, freaking good news that I got that I finally had this surgery. So in two days, I will be there. I will probably do some stories from the hospital. So if you're not following me on Instagram, I'm at Lefty O Bay, L-E-F-T-I-E-A-U-B-E. The link is in my show notes, so go follow me there if you want to see uh me reading and maybe writing a little from the hospital. And also, yeah, I almost forgot I decided to start posting on TikTok a little. I don't know how much because you know, time again. But I don't know, I've got like the nudge from the universe to start checking out TikTok. And right now I've just been like following and consuming. I've posted one video so far, which is like the introduction video that I made for Instagram, for my reel in Instagram. So for now it's only that, but I plan on doing more videos there, and I I I really feel like I will love TikTok, like those short-term videos. You know, I love to talk, so I can talk about my writing, share quick tips. So sometimes there is things that I'm doing that I'm like, okay, it's too short to share on the podcast. I can not do a whole episode on this, but it's still like a great trick or hack that I found, and so I think TikTok will be perfect for that. And I'm still I don't know what I will do with Instagram, like I feel like it's the different beast. Like, I don't know. I will just follow my instinct on that, but I will keep on posting on Instagram because I love Instagram and I love the community of build there, but I'm hoping of building a cute, fun, amazing community of writers over on TikTok too. So if you are on TikTok, my endless the same at Lefty OB. I will add it from now on to my show notes too. So if you want to follow me there, just go in the show notes. And if you're a writer and you're posting like writing content on TikTok, follow me or send me a message or anything so that I know that you exist and I will follow you because I really want to start building my writer community over on TikTok. So yeah, so that that's uh that's a cool new thing. And I was, I'm gonna be honest with you, I was like a bit terrified of TikTok. I don't know why. Um, but first I really thought like I would get sucked in into a void of TikTok, but I've been really good at controlling myself, and and yeah, the content I'm following is really like the content that feels right to me, and I'm really just discovering that like on Instagram, like you can create your own little platform that really suits you and feels right to you and makes you feel good, so you don't have to see and consume the like pranks and all those things if that's not what interests you. Yeah, you can create your own little TikTok bubble that fits with what you want, and I'm finding it so cool. So if you've been afraid of TikTok, this is your sign not to be afraid. So, yeah, that was about it. Uh, a big update for me, of course. When it's been some time since I've recorded, there is a big update, but right now let's go to the topic. So, the topic for this week, the big one: how to deal with rejection. This is such like I think this is the most the most emotional part of being a writer, of wanting to get published in traditional markets. So either you want a query agent or small presses to have your book published traditionally, or you want to submit your short stories to magazines. This is a part of it, and this is a part of it that we will all face. Like, there is no single writer who has never faced rejection when they tried the traditional path to publishing. Like it's just inevitable. If you haven't read On Writing Yet by Stephen King, go ahead and do it. And he talks about when he started to submit a short stories to magazine when he was a teenager, and how he would he had a nail on his wall and he would like just put his rejection on the nail every time he got one. And at some point, like the nail was all full of rejection, so he just put another nail next to it and he he started doing the same. So I I love this image because it's so visual and it shows that even him, even Stephen King, he had so many rejection letters, so it's just part of being a writer. And like if you're listening to many writing podcasts, when you hear writers talk about their journey to publishing, you will often hear them talk about the rejection they got, either from agents or publishers. You will hear it, you will hear some writers who their book died on submission. It's part of the process. And just knowing that it's normal, just normalizing it first and like going into this traditional publishing path, knowing that rejection will come, it's inevitable. If you have this mentality right away, it can help you like it's not not making easier, but just knowing that it's it's normal. And even like there is many writers who see that this as a as a good thing, and it is that receiving rejection letter, it means that you're trying, it means that you're part of this club of writers who tried it. And every published writer needed to go through that path, through this process of getting rejected before they got accepted. There is no exception to this. Like, I'm waiting to hear it. But if there is one person who never got rejected as a writer, like they are an outlier. Like, it's not the norm, absolutely not. So, so that's the first thing I think we all need to just accept is it's part of the process and it doesn't go away. Like, it's not because you have an agent that you will get accepted all the time, it's not because you had a book published that you will get accepted all the time. I think it's just like when you get the Stephen King level that you don't get rejected anymore. I think just for the name and the prestige, the editor will say yes to you. And like he said, uh, I don't remember where, but he said, like, it's crazy how much you don't hear often. This is not really for us as an excuse for rejection when you get like to the place where I am. But this tells a lot, like this shows that there is many reasons for you to get rejected, and that sometimes it's not really about the story. And I think that maybe Stephen King, maybe he doesn't get rejected anymore. But I've heard like writers time and time again on podcasts mentioning that it's not because you have a book published that it guarantees that the next will be published, and yeah, and writers who've had lots of short stories published still get lots of rejection too. Like it's just part of it. So, first of all, I think we all need to accept it so that we can better just deal with it. And I really wanted, like I said in the beginning, to talk about this because I've evolved a lot. And I have a dear friend of mine. We talk like a lot, and in the past year, I told her about every rejection I had, and she said, like the last one I got that I processed it like way better, and I dealt with it way better than I did like a year ago, and she was proud of me for that. So I was like, okay, I need to share my tips of how I managed to deal with it better. But if even if you get better at rejection, there might be some rejection along the way which hurt more for various reasons. Maybe you had your hopes more high. Uh so the first rejection I got in the past month, my hopes were really high because I thought the magazine was the perfect fit for my story. So when the form rejected it, it was like a blow. So it really hurt. And like I said, like the science fiction novella getting the feedback that I had, it hurt more. And I was like an entire evening of not knowing to do with all of my emotion. And if you follow me on Instagram, I did like stories about that, and you were so nice. Like people responding to me and like encouraging me and everything. You were oh, you were so nice. But that's just to show that it's not because I'm better at handling rejection, that not once in a while, like a rejection hits harder. And I'm guessing it will be the same with uh when I'm querying agents. So, my goal with querying agents is I don't want to think of a rejection on a query letter as a real rejection. This is a mind trick I'm playing with myself. I don't know yet if it's going to work, like we'll see. But I want to consider real rejection as being just a rejection from the partial or for full request. This is the lie I'm telling myself, basically, to like make it easier for me to be in the query trenches. So, and how I'm able to tell that to myself is that I'm saying with queries, I've paid for service to help me get uh feedback on my query, and I will pay it again just before I submit it. Uh, last time I will pay for someone to give me a query edit. Those are really cheap, usually like 40 bucks. You can you can have one. So do it before you start querying. So I know that when I will start querying, my query will be strong. It will not be a case of having a strong or not query. So if my query is strong, then if an agent rejects it, it's just because they are not connecting with the story, they're not interested in the story, and if they're not interested in the premise of the story, they will not be interested in the book. And if it doesn't work, it's not like a real rejection. I don't know if you're following in my logic there, but to me it makes a lot of sense. I will report back saying if it works or not. Well, this is what I plan on doing with querying. But even if I've gotten better at endling rejection, I'm pretty sure that the first rejection I will get from a portion or a full is going to hurt like hell. Because it's my novel, because I'd spend so much time working on it, because my hopes are so high, because I really think this book is good and I really think it could get published in that readers could love it, and the friends who read it, like my writer friends who read it, they all said things that I could make better, but they all said that they liked it. So my hopes are high. So, of course, the first rejection that I'll get on a person are full, and it will come. Like, I know it'll come. It's absolutely certain that it will get rejected. I know that it will hurt, but I still have that process to help me deal with it. So, because it's the pain that's the the worst. And I ask in my Instagram stories if people had questions about the topic of today. So I will do that for all the the future episodes of the podcast. So if you're following me on Instagram, go check my stories from time to time. And uh, if you have questions on the topic of the episode that's coming up, I will be able to answer them during the episode. But Joanna said, How do you process the pain of it? And I think this is the biggest part of how to deal with rejection it's what to do with the pain. So, my process is to first allow yourself to feel it. Allow yourself to be as angry as you want, as sad as you want, cry as much as you want, scream in a pillow, punch a pillow, all in constructive ways, please. Go take a run, do a workout, I don't know, anything you do to process pain or sadness or anger, do it and allow yourself to be as angry and mad at the editor or the agent as you wish you want. In the comfort of your head, like not on Twitter, in your own head, with your partner, with your friends, on your private group with your writer friends, in the DM with a writer friend on Instagram, be as mad as you want, basically, and say like they don't understand anything, allow yourself to feel it all. But give yourself a period of time where you allow yourself to feel those things because you don't want to spiral and stay in that energy forever, like it doesn't serve you anything. But if you try to suppress it right away when the rejection comes and you try to suppress the anger, suppress the sadness, not cry, not talk about it, it will just like brew inside of you and it will not be good. So to have this right balance between repressing and feeling it too much for too long, I love to leave myself like a window period, and usually it will be a day. Usually I will say, okay, from now to like the time I go to bed, I can feel all the feelings, and I I'm okay with all the feelings. I will allow myself to cry as much as I can. I love crying. This is a way for me to like let my emotions out. It's crying, like I'm I'm a crier. So I will cry. I will allow myself to cry as much as I can, and now I'm trying to teach my kids like just to understand that yeah, mom, mommy is crying, mommy is sad, but it's okay. It's it will it will pass, like because my daughter gets like alarmed when I'm crying over rejection. She's like, mommy, are you hurt? And I'm like, no, yes, but no, it will be okay. Um, so I I'm allowing myself to cry and to be angry and to really say like they don't understand anything and it will ruin the days. So I'm really letting myself feel it all and be okay with feeling it all. But after that, like after the day, usually it will be a day, and I will test myself like the next morning. I will test how I'm feeling. If I if there's still anger and sadness lingering, I will allow myself to have another day, but it Even not like the entire day, most of the time, like it will not be more than like 24 hours of feeling the feelings. And then I will say, okay, from that hour on, like when it's one o'clock in the afternoon, we're done and we're moving on. And I'm doing two things to allow myself to move on. First, what I will do is I will send the story to another market. And I will do that quickly after like this period of moping. To really say, like, okay, like there's hope again. We're just moving on. Elizabeth Gilberg talked about this in Bing Magic. She said that she was playing tennis with the universe, and that's really the attitude that I have. So yeah, I thought I was going to score a point, but the other player returned it the ball back to me, so I'm just going to return it back. Like, I'm not going to let them score a point. And that will be by me giving up. So I will always return the ball. So you play tennis with the universe on this. That's the first way that I'm using to uh move on. The second way is just to keep writing. Sometimes I will not write like on the same day that I get a resurrection or even the day before. It will be like still too raw on me. But I'm never letting like more than two days slip without me writing after I get a rejection. So I will get back into my routine and I will continue working on the new thing, on the new project. Because this way I know that I'm that I keep moving, that I keep on progressing, and I will have new things to submit at some point. That I always know that the new thing I submit, I have more hopes for because I know that I got better as a writer. So each new thing that I finish and that I send out has more chance of getting accepted than the past thing. So that's why I always like to keep the ball rolling by never letting a rejection stop me from writing. This is really important to me. And of course, like right after a painful rejection, going back to writing the other thing can be really difficult and there could be lots of resistance attached to it. But I think it's all about saying, okay, I'm just going to try. And sometimes it's the method of putting a timer. Like I'm going to write for just 15 minutes. And after that, if I still feel like shit and I still don't want to write, I will allow myself to stop writing. But for 15 minutes, I will allow it to be and I will write. And then I will do the same thing the next day and I will get back to it. And I think this is important because if you let rejection stop you from writing, you're letting the rejection win, basically. And that's not what you want. But you might say to me, Okay, this is all well and good. I need to move on. I need to stop feeling the feelings at some point. But how can I do that when a rejection makes me feel like a complete failure? Makes me feel like I suck at writing, uh, like my story's not good, like I'm not good, like nobody will ever want to publish me, like my story is not worth a penny to anyone, no one wants to read me, no one cares about me, no one sees me, and I'm just doing this for years and years, and it's not giving me anything. And you know, all those bad thoughts that bubble up when you get a rejection. Usually this is what makes it so painful. It's what we make the rejection mean. We make the rejection mean that we're not good enough, that the story is not good enough, that it shouldn't be published and it shouldn't be read. We make it have meaning and we need to stop making it mean something. This is something I've started doing really recently. If I had done this episode like a year ago, I would not have said that. I would have said the complete opposite. So this is something that I recently came into in the way of seeing rejection, and it has made a difference, and it's making me really more at peace with rejection. It's by making it stop mean something. Because one rejection doesn't mean anything. One rejection on its own doesn't mean your story is not good, doesn't mean that you're not a good writer, doesn't mean that it's not a good idea, doesn't mean that it's not well executed, doesn't mean that it's not interesting, that it doesn't make the reader feel something, doesn't mean that it's never going to get published, doesn't mean that you're never going to make any money with your writing and you're never going to be a published author and you're never going to become a full-time writer. One rejection doesn't mean nothing in all of this. Maybe the editor was having a bad day and he read your story and it didn't click, and that's it. You got rejected. Maybe they add like a similar story that's planned to be published soon or that was published soon and that's why they're rejected. Maybe the style doesn't work with the magazine, maybe the idea just didn't work with the magazine. Even if you did your research, even if you you did everything right, it doesn't mean anything. And you might be saying right now, like, okay, but what if I'm really not good enough? It could be fair. Like, if I look back at my first story that I submitted, the reason why I got rejected is because I was not good enough a writer yet. My skills weren't developed enough, the story was not good enough. That was why I got rejected, but I did not learn that from one single rejection. I learned it from having more data. So you can get some meaning by having lots of data on a story, not from one single rejection. And also, even if the reason why your story got rejected is that your your skills are not developed enough and the story is not good enough to get published. It could really well be the case. But do you really think it helps to flagellate yourself and tell yourself all those negative things and really be mean with yourself by making the rejection mean that you're not good enough? Does that really help? No. It prevents you to keep on writing and it makes you feel bad. And it puts you in such a bad headspace. So it's not helpful to you. So if you start with the premise and the idea that you always want to be learning, you always want to develop your craft, you always want to keep on writing, you seek feedback from your writer friends, uh, you can even hire an editor at some point just to get like a professional eye on your story and get better. Those are all things to get better. If you continue to do that and you continue to write new stuff, finish them, send them, at some point you will get better. Your skills will develop and you will produce better stories that at some point will get you your acceptance. If you're doing that no matter what you receive after a submission, no matter if you're getting rejection or acceptance, if you keep on doing that all the time, you will get better. So your rejection will turn into acceptance at some point. But you will not continue to get better because you got rejection. You can all do that without being harsh on yourself after getting a rejection and saying, see, it's the proof that you suck. Like this doesn't help. It just doesn't help. So if you promise to yourself that you're going to keep on growing as a writer for the rest of your life, that you're still going to be open to learning new things and getting new feedback and going back to your story to make them better and being open to trying new things, having fun with your writing, and you keep on submitting no matter the amount of rejection that you get, at some point you will get better and you will get accepted. And it's not by being hard on yourself with one single rejection that you'll get there. So stop making your rejection mean something. The only thing that they mean really is that you keep on trying. And that's freaking amazing. Like, that's so awesome that you keep on trying all the time. No matter if the ball gets back to you all the time, you keep swinging it back the other way. Like, that's what's important. That's the meaning that the rejection has, and that's the meaning that's important. All the rest, it doesn't. And when I said before that you get the meaning out of the data, that sometimes it's important to know that the data you're getting is trying to tell you something. So, for example, if you have a query letter and you've sent it to 50 different agents and you've gotten like below five requests, that data it tells you something. It tells you either you need to work again on your query letter. If it's the case, I would highly recommend that you go and hire either an editor, a book coach, that you go on Manuscript Academy to have a consultation with an agent to know what they are thinking when they're reading your query letters. You have like the shit about writing podcast that has this query critique. You could submit your query there, you can submit your query to print fraud podcast. There's all those resources that exist to get external feedback on your query and to know how you could improve it. So start by doing that. Start by doing one of those things: free option, paying option. You you can find them online. Like there is there is many opportunities to get a critique on your query. Start by doing that, see what they come up with and improve your query. So the data, this big data that you're getting is telling you that, or maybe you're not submitting to the right agent. That could be it too. Like if you just send it all the time to random agents without doing your own work, without checking, do they represent the genre that you're writing? Are they interested in the type of story that you're writing? Anyway, that you know, I've heard time and time again that if they are representing your genre, just try it out. Like sometimes my my friend was telling me, like, there was this agent who had said exactly that he enjoyed the type of books that that my friend had written, and he he rejected it right away. And there was this other agent who just said, I'm just interested in our, and she requested full. So you never know. So be sure that you're submitting to like a market or an agent that represents your genre. And if you're not doing that, so maybe that's why you're getting this data. So that's the two things that you could be doing. So when you have this big amount of data, or if you've gotten like lots of full requests and you're getting them and getting them, but it's all rejection at the end, and it's not the I loved it, but it's not really right for me type of rejection from full, like there is a problem. If you gotten a lot of them, like a lot, like 30, 40, 50, 60 of them, that will tell you that there's a problem structurally or in the craft. And again, you can hire an editor, you can hire them just to read like a synopsis, maybe, of your story, to know if there's a structural problem. So it doesn't have to cost you like thousands of dollars. You can have them check like the first two or three first chapters to know if there's a problem in the lie by line writing. This is things you can do with Manuscript Academy again. So I will link to all the things I've mentioned in the show notes, but you have those resources to help you see if what you think the data mean is right and then improve it so that the data change at the end. But it's not just one rejection that will tell you this. And it's not just by seeing that rejection and trying to change something that you will be able to change this rejection into an acceptance. You need maybe some external professional help to make sense of the data. But on its own, the rejection doesn't mean anything. And of course, all of that is premised by saying that you did your own work first. That, of course, it's like the most important thing. But I think if you're listening to a podcast like mine, like you're the kind of person who's doing his own work. But to be sure that the rejection doesn't mean anything, it means that you did a research on how to query, on craft in general, how to write a good story, what the agents are looking for, what the markets are looking for. You've read the magazine you've submitted to, you've read like short stories to see about how it works, you've written numbers of draft, you've sent your draft for feedback to your writer friends, you're not sending out a first draft. So those are the basic homeworks that I didn't mention before because it's assuming that you're already doing all of this. Because if you're not doing this, everything that I just said, start with that before you you send out anything. This needs to be strong, and of course, you will keep on developing your skills, but you should at least have tried a bit to develop your skills, like to just know okay, what's the structure supposed to be in a novel? Though those sorts of things. You you don't have to do it intellectually. Like, for example, Stephen King did it intuitively, he learned how to write a good story all within his intuition. So by reading and writing and submitting all the time, he repeated that until he got better. So that's the way to do it. But personally, that's not my my favorite way to do it because I'm more intellectual and I like to understand how things work. So I will write a better story structure if I understand the mechanics behind it and if I analyze it in other stories before I apply them to my own, than if I'm just consuming, consuming, consuming. And I'm still consuming. So I'm thinking that you can have both the benefit of the two, basically. But you know, if that if that's not your thing, like I know that's not every writer who likes to learn writing intellectually with books and with courses and by dissecting the work of other writers. I know that's not everyone who functioned like this. So if that's not you, that's okay. Doesn't mean that you're not developing your skills. But if that's not you, then you keep on writing, you keep on getting feedback, either from professionals or from your writer friends, and you keep on submitting. But doing your own works, learning about the market you're trying to get into, this is essential before you can embark on this on this journey. And when you've done that, the rejection doesn't mean anything on its own. So stop making it mean something, stop attaching all those negative thoughts to it and just sing for what it is, which means that you're progressing. But all that being said, that's why I said first that you need to leave yourself some time for feeling the feelings. It's not because you know that it doesn't mean anything, that you will not have some feelings, that you will not be sad and angry, because it's still your hopes and your desire to share your story with readers. That's what got like shattered by this rejection. And this shattering hurts. Like, no matter if you know like that it doesn't mean anything, it still hurts. So you still need to give yourself time to grieve and to feel the feelings. But you keep on going, and if you keep on going, you keep on submitting, your acceptance will come, your call with an agent will come, your published books in your hands will come if you keep on going and if you don't let yourself be bringed down by rejection. And it hurts so badly, that's why many people end up quitting writing, quitting trying to publish, because it hurts too much. But I think that if you're just implementing what I just said in the last episode, I talk about affirmation as a writer, how you can use those affirmations to keep you in a good ad space. And one affirmation that I love when it comes to rejection is saying my story will get published by the right market at the right time. This is uh an affirmation that I will repeat when I'm feeling like I'm getting brought down by my rejection. So after all of this, you need to have in yourself the trust, the deep trust that if you keep on going, you keep on having fun, you keep on doing it for the right reason, really because you love it, because you want to be read, when you keep on focusing on the right thing with the trust in your heart that at some point it will be yes, that at some point you will be published, you will be able to get through it with more ease and more peace, and you will be able to keep on going and you will get there. And trust me, I've had one acceptance letter so far, and I got uh honorable mention for that story in a collection. And trust me, the joy, the happiness, the excitation, all those amazing emotions that you feel when you get this acceptance, it's worth it. It's worth it for all the pain that you've had before. When you get this copy in your hand, or when you see it on the screen, it it's worth it. So keep on going, keep on trusting that it will come at some point, and it just will if you keep on going. We don't know when, like we cannot say when. Like the when is the variable we have no control on. But if you keep on going, you keep on progressing, you keep on learning about the business, and you keep on trying, it just gotta be positive at the end, right? So thank you so much for being with me again this week. I hope you get a lot out of this episode. I hope it helps you to process your future rejection. If you enjoyed the podcast, you can always share it with your writer friends. You can share it a screenshot on Instagram. Be sure to tag me. I love seeing when people share the podcast. I love knowing about it. Don't hesitate to reach out on Instagram. I love connecting with you. You can also subscribe to the podcast and leave a review, which, like I said at the top, makes me just so happy. So I don't know if I'll be able to record and publish an episode next week because I will be fresh out of the surgery. But you know, it shouldn't be another month until you get a new episode. Let's hope. So, yeah, we'll see when the next episode comes out. But anyway, I'm wishing you a lovely week or weeks of writing.