Category: Identity

Today’s #OvercomeRejection post is brought to you by Kelly Chripczuk, blogger over at “A Field of Wild Flowers,” one of the most beautifully written blogs your bound to stumble upon here on these old interwebs. So follow the link at the end of the post and check out some of her other words. In the mean time, here is her post on overcoming rejection (and please feel free to submit your story of overcoming rejection to shawnsmucker@yahoo.com):

It took me over a week to think of a single concrete experience of writing related rejection.

Repress much?  Maybe.

Or maybe I simply haven’t risked enough.  You have to play your cards to win.  You have to play your cards to lose.

Driving in the car the other day, though, it came to me, the memory of a very concrete experience.

About six months into blogging I met with a friend, the editor of a regional parenting magazine.  She wanted to know whether I would be interested in writing a monthly print column, something about parenting and faith.

“What angle are you looking for?” I asked.

“It’s up to you,” she replied, “I see this as an opportunity for you to build a name, a platform, you can do whatever you like.”

Gulp.

So I started, I played my cards and led with what I thought was a pretty impressive hand.  I kept to my word limit and tried to tell spacious stories that invited the reader in.

Three months in I got an email, they were going to go “in another direction,” the column was canceled.

Game over.  Just like that.

I will say that I wept.

It was something, you know, and when you’re a full-time homemaker and mother to four, having a paying gig in the real world, well, it helps you feel like a real person might someday emerge when the years of diapers and laundry pass (they do pass, right?!).

Rejection, like praise, comes with its own set of temptations.

I knew I had written well.  I knew it had simply been a poor fit and there hadn’t been enough time and feedback to find a voice that worked for that publication.

I knew all of that.

But I was tempted, sorely, to let that rejection say something more about my writing and, more importantly, about me.  Desperate (at times) for affirmation and (ultimately) for identity that transcends my circumstances, I face (still) the temptation to let that experience sink all the way down to the heart of me; to let it become an answer to that ever present question, “Am I good enough?”

It’s the same thing I want to do with praise, the same process, only it feels a whole lot worse to begin with.

And there you have it, the heart of the problem, I’m not going to be free to take risks if every failure, every success is allowed to imprint itself with permanence upon the heart of me.

Risk (read: writing) involves vulnerability, a willingness to walk into the arena of life as Brene Brown puts it.  It’s a glorious, muddy, terrifying place, this arena – parenting, writing, I face failure and success every day.  I play good hands and terribly poor ones.

I celebrate the wins and mourn the losses but I don’t live there.  Not any more.  I won’t let what happens in the ring label the heart of me or answer that ancient question.

At the end of the day, at the end of all of my successes and failures, I return home.

I return to love that is unconditional, love that reshuffles the deck and deals out a new hand – new every morning.  I return to the One who changes the question, changes the answers and offers a simple affirmation, “You are loved.”

From that place of truth I step out again, renewed and cautiously hopeful.

This is how I deal with rejection.

Oh, and repression helps too.

For years I dabbled at writing. A few scripts here, an article there. Every now and then I would dust of my historical novel manuscripts and toy with it, until some other project came along and took priority. Two years ago I decided to buckle down and actually finish the thing. I plowed ahead, month after month, until the manuscript was finished. 106,000 words of polished—and hopefully readable—prose.

I was proud of my masterpiece, especially when friends and family claimed they loved it, but I was not so naive as to think it was ready for an agent, so I sent it off (with some trepidation) for a paid critique.

A few weeks later the lengthy document was returned. The critique was professional, thorough and filled with encouraging comments, but there was no escaping the verdict: The novel did not work.

I was angry—how could she say such unkind things about my hero? I was shaken—I knew my plot needed work, but was it really that bad? I was crushed—all those months of writing, wasted. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a novelist.

Or maybe I just needed to try again.

After a few days of grieving, grumbling and eating more chocolate than was good for me, I sat down and gave myself permission to start over. I would keep the basic premise, the main characters and the setting, but throw out everything else.

This time I took a month to think through the plot before plunging into the writing. I filled the dining room table with sticky notes and a notebook with possible scenarios. When I was finally satisfied with the plot, I began writing.

Half-way along, I realized that I was still holding too tightly to the previous version, so I threw out several months of work and rewrote entire sections. It was the decision.

A year later I am almost finished with a new first draft. In a few months I will be ready to submit it for a critique. Hopefully I have learned from my mistakes and this time the feedback will involve tweaking rather than wholesale revision, but whatever the verdict I know I can start over, make it better, and keep writing.

Because I am a writer.

For more on Lisa and her writing, check out my blog at lisaebetz.com