Why I’m Aiming for 100 Rejections Next Year

I never used to be afraid of getting rejected as a writer. That’s not to say I never felt anxious submitting my work, or that I never got jittery anticipating a response to it, or even that I was never disappointed when a rejection letter would inevitably appear. But when it came to nail-biting, stomach-churning nerves at the thought of some faceless person telling my work–and by extension, me–no? Not really a problem I ever faced.

I’m not sure what changed in the last few years, although I do have a few guesses. The mental health crisis turned crisis of confidence that I’ve blogged about at length definitely played a major role. So did falling out of practice with submitting my work and with having my work critiqued by others. The dawning realization that I still had a lot more to learn about story and craft, which came in as I wrote and re-wrote Facing the Music, probably didn’t help either.

Fast forward to now, when I’ve been dealing with new and unfamiliar jitters over querying my work. That’s not to say I’ve stopped submitting entirely, but I find it a lot more intimidating and anxiety-inducing than I ever did before.

Until I found this blog post about aiming to collect 100 rejections a year.

This isn’t a new idea, and I’m not even sure if the author of this post is really the first person to suggest it. I’ve certainly heard it mentioned before, both as a strategy for combating rejection anxiety and for continuing to advance your career and to put yourself out there regardless of your perception of your talent. For whatever reason though, the idea of collecting rejections really resonated with me when I stumbled across it again a couple of months ago.

Little known fact about me: I am a hyper-competitive person, even when I’m competing against myself. I hate to lose. I hate feeling like I’ve failed. In fact, I’ve become increasingly convinced that one major source of my personal struggle these last few years has been the pervasive feeling that I’ve failed at my writing and at having a writing career.

What better way to combat that feeling then by competing against myself over how much I can fail?

At its core, that’s what rejection is. A miniature (or not so miniature, depending on your perspective and circumstances) failure. Not a failure of you as a person, obviously, but an attempt to meet a goal that falls short. Rejection isn’t the end of the world, but because we writers put so much time and energy and heart into our work, it can feel like the end of the world.

When you change your goal, you can stop treating rejection as a miniature failure and treat it like a miniature success instead. Because not only did you take the plunge and submit your work, you took another step closer to your new goal (collecting 100 rejections) that’s still in the service of your pre-existing goal (getting your work published). It allows you to celebrate each rejection instead of moping for weeks at a time.

Or, alternatively, to mope for a few days and then celebrate. 🙂

In the months since I decided to start shooting for 100 rejections per year–with the understanding that I’m going to fall way, way short in 2018–I’ve gotten rejected twice. One rejection was for a short story that I’d submitted to an online literary magazine. The other was for an editorial job that I applied for, and came very close to getting.

(Both rejections showed up while I was on my honeymoon, funnily enough.) Although being told ‘no’ still stung, that sting was immediately mitigated by the reminder that I’d moved one step closer toward my yearly rejection goal, and one step closer to being told ‘yes.’ (And by a couple scoops of gelato, let’s be real.)

Writing as a business can be so challenging, especially since rejection is such an integral part of that business. But as badly as I want to be published, to be professional, I know I need to learn how to move beyond coping with rejection and start embracing it for what it is: an indication that I’ve had the courage to tell stories and send them out into the world.

Which is why I’m not just hoping to be a better writer next year, or to write a lot more. I’m hoping I’ll get rejected a lot more as well.

How do you handle rejections? Would you consider setting a rejection goal?