I HATE YOUR GUTS!!!!!

Sometimes, that's how it feels.

A personal insult. A slap in the face. As one writer friend said, like your favorite dog just died.

Of course, I'm talking about rejection.

In the writing industry, especially as a freelancer, rejection comes often, sometimes too often.

Think about this.

My last four PUBLISHED pieces of fiction were rejected 11 times before finding a home. I NEVER broke a 50% "go ahead" rate on my query letters and don't know anyone who ever has.

Publishing is competitive. It is hard. It takes a lot of perseverance.

I'm not going to name names, but there is a guy on one of my mystery writing lists who is a professional news writer. He had a book, chatted with an agent at a conference and she expressed interest. He sent her the book and she declined to represent it. Now, he's saying he's lost the desire to write.

What's important is what the agent said in rejecting him. The book wasn't right FOR HER.

It is important to keep in mind that there are MANY reasons for rejection and only one is "you suck." Here are a variety of reasons I've been given over the years:
• We already have a story like that in the works.
• Too similar to one we did six months ago.
• Too violent for our publication.
• We don't do profiles.
• We don't print first person pieces.
• We have too many stories on backlog right now.

My favorite...and I'm going by memory was this:
Clay,
Can't use the idea you pitched...we published one identical to it in last year's annual and you should know. You wrote it.

The point is rejection happens for many reasons. And yes, sometimes it is because a person is simply a bad writer, or a piece was very poorly written.

Don't take rejection too personally. Certainly, if a query or a story gets repeated rejections, you want to take another look at it, but there are so many reasons -- and the rejections are usually form letters -- it's just not worth getting worked up over.