Rising Above Rejection

I’m not gonna lie, when my agent reached out to me with my first rejection from a publishing company this song started playing in my head:

For those of you not familiar with the magic that is Lion King 2 go and watch it.

I’ll wait.

For those of you who don’t have the time to watch a feature length film right at this moment, the video above just about captures my feelings of angst.  To say I was bummed out would be an understatement and devastated might be a bit of an exaggeration.  The long and short of it was that I was sad.

Here I was, offering up my metaphorical first born child and the first publisher to express interest changed their mind.  They were fine holding my baby for a moment, but once they saw the dirty diaper they blanched and handed it back.

Not to say my manuscript is in any way like a dirty diaper.  It just needs the careful polish that could be provided by a publishing company’s editor.

That being said, I’m trying to realize that, even if my first book doesn’t get published, I’ve still gotten farther than many others in my field.  I have an agent.  The representative from a large publishing company had nice things to say about my writing style and the characters I portrayed.  I have numerous people in my life who believe in me.

Whenever I encounter setbacks I try to think about the life of J.K. Rowling.  That woman had it rough.  In addition to the many difficult things that happened to her she also got rejected by numerous publishing companies.  If she had simply given up, I wouldn’t have an entire shelf and a half of my bookcase dedicated to Harry Potter.

That is how I have to think of rejection moving forward.  I think back on how crushed I was every time an agent said no to representing me.  But if I didn’t go through all that rejection I wouldn’t have ended up with the perfect agent.  A woman who appreciates me and my writing.

As Dory once said, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming…”

Bye for now!