If you read enough biographies of successful writers, you’ll find some amusing anecdotes about their early rejections by publishers.  Whether they burned them, numbered them, or wallpapered their bedrooms with them, all seemed to handle rejection with some form of levity (or, in absence of levity, alcoholism).  I suppose one must only be rejected a few times before convincing oneself that it is not, in fact, personal.  If you were to take it personally, producing any kind of work would be dangerous.  If this creative spirit that you’ve kept alive long past its acceptable phase in childhood and nurtured through every major life transition is now suddenly laid bare to be flogged by impersonal reviewers, you’d be rendered impotent as an artist (not to mention a lousy first date).

 

I keep my rejection slips in a neat stack on my writing desk, next to my notebooks and index cards.  Whenever I open my mailbox and see one of those carefully prepared self-addressed stamped envelopes that I have sent out so optimistically, I’m usually relieved to get any word at all.  I actually take the rejections as a courtesy.  Better to know for sure, right?

 

But extending this thought a little further does make for troubling times.  While recently walking through a local book shop with my wife, I realized that I was being a harsher critic than any of these nameless editors who snap off a form letter.  By heading straight to one shelf, scanning for one title, and paying for my one purchase, I was effectively rejecting any other literature for that day.  Furthermore, I had long ago conceded that there were mountains of books (good books, reputable books) that I would just never get to read.  I was, in fact, the second (larger) filter between the artist and the world.

 

If you’re lucky enough to get your book in that (or any other) store someday, it will most likely be met by a callous or, at best, indifferent public who would just as soon stick to what works for them, thank you very much.

 

How do you create in the face of this?  We all know, of course, but we all need reminding.  That we would ever think there is a public out there for us that seeks to understand what we want to say just shows how that rare and enviable stage of childhood has not left us.  And perhaps it’s that which we want to bring out of others.  Just one man talking here.