The Gift of Rejection

Seventeen days ago I, along with dozens of other women in a Facebook writing group I belong to, submitted my query letter to Dial Press. It’s the first time I’ve queried my complete book versus my individual essays and it’s terrifying. Today, many of those women started posting that they’d received rejections. To date, there have been only two requests for proposals.

And so, I’ve spent the whole afternoon compulsively refreshing my email - waiting for my very own rejection letter.

I message my mentor. Tell her what I’m doing.

“Stop,” she says. “It won’t help.” But it’s hard to stop. Even though the odds of it being anything other than a rejection are astronomical, while there’s still that infinitesimal sliver of hope I continue to hit refresh.

“The tension is killing me,“ I tell my daughter Emilie.

“A rejection is okay,” she says. “It makes a better origin story. Acceptance first time out of the gate is too simple. Too perfect. Origin stories need struggle, challenge and insurmountable obstacles…”

“We should celebrate either way,” I tell her.

“Champagne obviously. Either way,” she agrees.

Because a rejection for my manuscript from a Big 5 publishing house is still an incredible feat.

It’s a big deal that I’ve (almost) completed my collection of interlocked essays. It’s amazing that I managed to condense my entire book and author experience into a 500 word query letter. And it’s pretty incredible that I’ve got a book proposal ready to go, just in case it’s needed.

And of course, the real reason to celebrate is that I spent my day worrying about when my rejection was coming. There’s been enough trauma in the last few years to fill a couple of memoirs, but right now everything is calm, and I have energy left to worry about my writing.

Which is the biggest blessing of all.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash