One morning at work I got a phone call from a client telling me she no longer needed my services. You guessed it–I was getting fired. “Don’t take it personal,” she said. “It’s not you, it’s just the way you do my hair.”
Ouch. How was I not supposed to take that personal? Giving someone a hairstyle is like stamping your personality onto their head. For goodness sake you just spent an hour getting their hair to do your bidding, and someone tells you to not take it personal? I’m a person. A human being. So excuse me if I take it personally.
It’s the same with writing. We put so much into our writing that when we get that rejection in the mail, (or now-a-days in a cold e-mail), it stings. When someone doesn’t want our words, we take it personally.
Now I know many disagree on the subject and say that it’s possible to reject someone’s work without rejecting them as a person. And trust me, I get that. But when we are talking about someone creating something, whether it be a chef or carpenter or hairstylist, (I’ll stop here, you get the point don’t you?), you are putting a piece of yourself in your work. Your putting yourself on the line. How many of us have had a wonderful meal fixed for us and after the first bite you feel loved by the person that cooked it? They are sending you love with every bite you take.
We know writing is a business, and most people see business like they see an alligator–cold, hard, and ruthless. That’s why it’s so easy for people to reject you and say it’s not personal. And for them it isn’t. But to us, the poor creative souls that decided that we wanted to write for a living, we are left with a bleeding heart.
The solution? Our skin has to become like the alligator. Not cold and hard, but thick. So thick that when rejection bullets try to kill us they bounce right off. We get a rejection, shrug, then fire off another query letter or synopsis to our editor. We keep going, we keep moving. We can not get tied up into thinking that our work is who we are. Our work is what we do.
So yes, rejection hurts. It’s personal. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. And the longer you write the less rejection stings you.
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