BookHuntersBlog.com

Welcome to Tips for Authors!
In this new series published authors give advice on topics that are on every aspiring author’s mind. Any author is welcome submit his/her thoughts on the particular subject. If you are interested, please contact us at webmaster@bookhuntersblog.com for details.

First topic in the series:

How To Deal With Rejection?

by J.E. Braun, author of PARANOIA
“Rejection hurts. Trust me. I had a lot of practice with it in my younger years, but at least that prepared me for being a writer. The truth is, we, as writers, depend largely on other people’s opinions. Unfortunately for us, these other opinions are not always in line with our own.

I try to always take the approach that what I see as a beautifully-crafted, finely honed, destined-to-be-a-classic, work of art will be seen, by and editor/publisher/agent as a big, steaming pile of donkey dung. This way, I’m almost guaranteed to have a better than expected reaction. Remember what they say, aim high and you will fail high, aim low and it’s easier to accomplish something (okay, so maybe that’s not exactly what they say).

There is really, in my opinion, only one way to deal with rejection and that is to prepare for it. Steel your nerves. Know it’s coming. Inevitably, somebody in the business will not like your work, or will not have the time to deal with it, or will not be the right person for your writing style. Whatever the reason, there will be rejection. Hopefully, it will be nice with some sort of constructive criticism, but more than likely, it will be a form letter that barely even acknowledges you as a living, breathing creature.

The true test of character comes, though, when you do receive some feedback. What do you do with it? Do you write it off? After all, this person rejected you. They’re out of their mind, right? Or do you read it carefully, consider it, see if it has any merit? I think now, reading this from a sane state of mind, it’s obvious that the latter is the better way to handle it. Unfortunately, in an emotion-filled moment, it becomes easy to disregard what could be valuable feedback.

There’s one other important aspect to handling rejection. It used to involve toilet paper, keying cars, and yelling obscenities in her front yard at two a.m., but if there’s one thing anger management and restraining orders teach you, it’s that there are better ways to handle this. Specifically, alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. After that three day binge, you can shake off that hangover and sent that manuscript right back out! What… bad advice?”

Thank you for your input! Stay tuned for more tomorrow, July 2nd.

For more on J.E. Braun and his work, including excerpts of his book Paranoia, please visit his Profile on AllTheseBooks.com.

Paranoia - now available!