You open your inbox and see a response from a journal. You feel a little anticipation, but mainly dread. You’ve been expecting this rejection email for weeks, maybe even as soon as you submitted your piece.
Imagine yourself feeling calm when you hear from an editor. Feeling excited and confident and safe when you press send on submitting your article. That’s what you can look forward to after working together. And I know that might seem impossible right now, but trust me you can get there.
This year I took on the challenge of getting 100 rejections in a year because this gets you out of the fear of submitting and into action. Accepting rejection as part of the process of growth helps you refocus on why you’re writing, why you’re showing up, why you care about sharing your ideas with the world.
Now I find academic publishing easy and fun so I’m going to use a more recent example where I made this shift myself because expanding into writing stories and narrative non-fiction was a big growth area for me. In the past 12 months, I got rejected 21 times to non-academic writing outlets, but I also got three acceptances. That’s 85 percent rejections and I know nothing has gone wrong. It doesnt mean I'm a failure. Rejection is part of the process
I’ve learned to find rejection attractive. I seek it out because I know that when I’m experimenting, trying new things, getting it wrong, that is when I grow the fastest. I’m able to see getting something wrong, not as a measure of my self-worth (or lack of it), but as a question: what did I learn? What will I do differently next time?
Feel free to swap out “story” with “academic paper” or “job application” or “grant application”, etc. Whatever you’re currently wanting to expand in your business/passion projects/life. Let yourself get excited about sharing your craft and ideas, excited about creating and being in a flow state and commit to believing that what you have to share is wanted!
It’s your time to shine and fearlessly share your work.
Original article that inspired me:
https://lithub.com/why-you-should-aim-for-100-rejections-a-year/
