Rejected

My first official publisher rejection has rolled into my inbox.

When I started writing this novel, I made myself a deal that I would keep going until I got a rejection from a publisher. I was not allowed to give up before that.

Sometimes when I tell people this, they don’t get it. I have to explain how aiming for a rejection letter can possibly be motivating. (And that no, I don’t actually plan to give up after I get the rejection letter.)

You see, I used to be really bad a failure.

I was a kid who got good grades. I got good grades without trying. In fact, I got good grades while making terrible decisions, such as staying up half the night during exam weeks so I could do NaNoWriMo (a prize-less challenge to write 50k words of a book in the month of November, ie. 30 days).

Maybe you hate me a little for being that kid.

Fair enough.

I hated being that kid. I hated that classmates would compare themselves to me. I hated doing better than people who legitimately studied harder. I hated that the stuff I actually did work for—art and writing—got blown off as ‘talent’ I was just ‘lucky’ to magically have. I hated, most of all, that I wasn’t allowed to fuck up.

It’s not that I got punished for failure. It was just the … lack of options. The complete certainty people had that I would do well. How excruciatingly noteworthy it would have been if I didn’t.

The turning point of my life was moving out for university where I could meet all new people and just be some Bachelor of Arts Nobody faffing around doing Bachelor of Arts Nobody things. Mediocrity breathed life into me.

I still wanted to be a writer. But whenever I said it aloud, people told me I would need thick skin. They always had this weird sceptical look, like my organs were embarrassingly visible through my translucent exterior, and they weren’t sure how to point it out politely.

I stopped saying it aloud.

They weren’t wrong. When it comes to writing, everyone gets rejected. Everyone. EVERYONE. Back then, I hadn’t failed much.

So I did something about that. I created Silence Killed the Dinosaurs.

I don’t think I’ve ever talked about how hard that was to begin with. Me, a loose conglomeration of social anxiety and perfectionism in a trench coat, putting things I personally made with my own brain out there for anyone to see.  Absolutely ridiculous. It was like Superman drinking kryptonite cocktails. Achilles dipping his feet in crocodile infested waters. Dracula eating garlic bread while juggling pencils at sunrise. (Side bar: vampires actually have a lot of easily accessible weaknesses for a Big Bad Monster Type, don’t they?)

I had panic attacks after hitting publish, and nightmares about people telling me it was shit. I would obsess over my notifications every time I put something new out there.

I kept doing it. And as I kept doing it, it got easier.

Now when I post something, I barely think about it. I don’t stress about who sees it. I don’t care what they think about it. In fact, it ended up being so easy I set up a whole extra art account for pattern design and regularly enter art challenges and happily post about everything, including my failures.

Practice makes perfect.

Read into this what you will, but I don’t write intelligent literature. I don’t write plausibly bestseller book club type books. I write fantasy. And it’s not even realistic, gritty, intricate fantasy with amazingly detailed worldbuilding and world-changing storylines. I write silly spec fic about small-beans characters who fuck everything up and disappoint everyone constantly.

A rejection letter was my goal, because that’s the hardest thing for me.

This might sound braggy, but I knew I could finish writing a book. Not necessarily a good book, mind you, but an existing book. When it comes to goals, I’m a natural marathon runner. I can keep on keeping on however long it takes to get the job done. I completed NaNoWriMo purely after bedtime during exam month when I was 16, after all.

I didn’t know if I could be brave enough to submit my writing.

Which is why I made it so that to fulfil my personal goal, I couldn’t just write the book and leave it moldering on my computer, telling myself no one would appreciate it like I would anyway so there’s no point. I would have to send it out to get that rejection letter.

Honestly, it was really scary. And really hard. I put off the final step for a long time, especially as I had the excuse of But I Just Did A Childbirth Give Me A Minute right in that window. But in the end, I was brave enough.

The true genius of my rejection letter plan was not just that it allowed me to fail, but that it let me celebrate it.

I’m good at failure now, and I don’t care who knows. I studied for this test.