We all get them – rejections. I’ve heard Stephen King received hundreds of them.  Recently I received a whole fistful. Sometimes I feel like they’re little demons, giggling in my ear. When I receive four or five in a day, they become monsters, growling over my head.

I don’t know about you, but I keep all my rejections in several folders. (yes they are almost all full).  Every so often I go back and re-read some of them.  Why didn’t that editor love that story?  What does she mean there’s no sexual chemistry?  Need to pick up the pace?  Too much set up?   AAHH.  It goes on and on.

But wait.  When I go back through and read that manuscript, maybe the editor was right.  Maybe I did spend a page describing the setting instead of moving the story along.  Okay, so I’m forcing the chemistry between the two, but I was in a rush to edit this and get it out the door.  And this is a romantic suspense.  The pace should be quick.  Oh, all, right, the editors made some valid points in those rejections.

Okay, what is my point?  Maybe this is a good time to go back through those rejection letters you’ve received. Look for the value in them. That sounds like a hard lesson, but I find every time I re-read an old rejection (except for the form letters) I learn something.

Let me tell you about one thing that really woke me up.  Twenty years ago (yes, it was that long ago) I decided I wanted to be a romance writer.  I joined RWA, which was just in its beginnings; I even attended some of the first conferences.  And I sent in my submissions on my brand new Selectric typewriter—my first big writing expense.

And I got rejected then, too.  And discouraged.  After about five of those, I gave up.

I stopped sending in my queries. Stopped going to conferences, dropped my membership in RWA.  No more rejections came in the mail.

But a funny thing happened.  My writing never stopped.  I continued that.  Years went by and I was writing and enjoying it, but there was something lacking. So what if there were typos, or if the story went nowhere. I kept writing. But I still wanted more.

One day, while cleaning out my old file cabinet for one of my many moves, I ran across those old rejection letters.  What was this?  Buried below the paragraph rejecting my full manuscript was the sentence This doesn’t work for us, but please feel free to send future projects.   I don’t remember reading that back then, only seeing the rejection.  Another letter asked for a revision of my work—which I never sent. Yet another letter said Your story has merit. We’d be interested in seeing more.  What was I expecting, to sell on just that proposal?  Why didn’t I ever finish that and send it?  It was that first rejection—too painful to get over that quickly. Maybe I feared another rejection with the new manuscript.

It took years to get over that, but finally I realized I still wanted my work published. It wasn’t doing anyone any  good piling up in folders on my shelves or on computer disks. I began studying the markets again—and discovered things had changed a lot in the twenty years I was away.  I felt like I was starting all over, but I took a deep breath and began sending out my query letters and proposals.

Now the rejections have started to arrive again.  But this time I’m not giving up. I’m using my rejections, looking for nuggets that can help me improve my writing. I’m taking the editors’ advice--picking up that pacing. Moving that story along. Working on improving that sexual chemistry.

One more thing. All those file folder of  rejections? They’re proof that I refuse to give up.  

And that’s what I tell those demons when they’re giggling in my ear or growling at me.