On getting rejected (a lot)

Why I'm about to be champagne drunk on a Monday

Hello darlings -

<looks out at the world> yep still sucks <goes back to writing>

So… I’ve been getting rejected. A lot. 8 rejections of my work in 2025 alone! Ayayaya. So I decided to reup and update a very old MHAWS (from 2019! I was emailing 46 people!) about rejection because I needed these reminders.

Over the course of my career, rejects mean less and less to me. I used to be derailed for days — weeks — years by a bad rejection. Now I mope around for a little bit and get back to work. How? A simple, 14 part plan that involves being repeated stabbed by an intellectual knife held by people I respect! (joking. not really. but yeah).

Here’s how I have learned to cope with rejections:

I developed a mourning ritual for my rejections.

Rejections represent a death (of a possibility) and deserve a mourning period. I drink a bottle of champagne every time I am rejected. I wallow in the sadness for a day. There may be some ranting and raving. I update my rejection counter. I give myself a day or two.

And THEN I read the reviews, develop a plan, and move on. Your ritual might be: Burning the reviews. Drinking whiskey. Lighting up the group chat. Cooking an elaborate dessert and eating it. Going for a long run. Watching a sappy movie and crying. Planting some flowers. Booking a flight out of the country. Researching foreign currency. Calling a friend. Calling your dad. Calling your representative. Rewatch your favorite episode of your favorite show. Put on Eras and dance along. Go to a death metal show and join the mosh pit. Make a effigy and burn it. Putting on your favorite rejection playlist and screaming to it.

Criteria for a good rejection ritual:

1. it facilitates your expression of emotions (anger, sadness, and anxiety are all emotions I routinely feel with rejections)

2. it is finite in time (I don’t let myself wallow forever) (but I am still wallowing about a rejection I received on Dec 25, 2010 so… maybe don’t listen to me)

3. it is something I LIKE and practice regularly so I won’t only associate with rejection (i.e. I drink champagne all the time! I love it! I drank champagne on 50 different occasions in 2024. And I wasn’t even rejected that much!)

4. it feels like a treat. (okay, calling your representative doesn’t feel like a treat. BUT).

I talk to the experts:

You might be tempted to clamp down and not tell anyone. After all, it is embarrassing to get rejected!

Fuck that shit. It is a badge of honor to get rejected and all your friends know this and have that badge too.

You are probably surrounded by people who experience rejection all the time. How do they deal? What are the ways they manage this weird and bad part of our lives? My friends tell me that they too have been rejected a lot! They tell me about the stories of a paper rejected 14 times before it hit at a top places. About the little paper that could. About the mean reviewer or the nice reviewer or the helpful reviewer. Thank the fucking goddesses for friends in this business!

Here are some thoughts on rejection that have stuck with me:

Read Chuck Wendig on rejection. Consider what he means when he says:

“You need to see rejection as bad-ass Viking Warrior battle scars, as a roadmap of pain that makes you stronger, faster, smarter, and stranger. A writer without rejections under her belt is the same as a farmer with soft hands; you shake that dudette’s hand and you know, she’s not a worker, not a fighter, and wouldn’t know the value of her efforts if they came up and stuck a Garden Weasel up her ass. Rejections are proof of your efforts. Be proud to have ’em.”

(slightly altered to reflect my gender pronouns)

Or Maya Angelou:

“Only one attitude enabled me to move ahead. That attitude said, ‘Rejection can simply mean redirection.”

Or Rachel Khong

I just feel really bad about it for a day and then I try not to think about it anymore. I mean, I think that being a writer is just a lot of endless rejection forever. It’s constant and happens throughout your whole career, if you’re lucky.

Rejections, if you are lucky:

The next part of this seems absolutely insane, but stay with me okay: aim for rejections. The only way you get rejected is if you send stuff out and aim high and try too hard.

To facilitate this, I set a rejection goal every single academic year (current goal: 12 rejections, I’ve gotten to 10).

Now, you might think: Mirya, academic life is FULL of rejections. Why would I want more? Well, if you think of rejections themselves as the goal, then getting one lets you cross something off your list! It demonstrates to you that you tried! You took a risk!

Move the fuck on.

We all have rejections that stick with us for a long time, but most of mine (even very mean or unfair or stupid ones) have faded into the mists of the past. I don’t keep them. I don’t revisit them. The worst ones are absolutely not about me, but are about someone else who is small minded and without a life. I might spend a little bit of time wishing that they get the shits right before a big event or become allergic to their favorite food but then I move the fuck on.

What I have I missed, my darlings? What other parts of this life do you have questions about? Drop all questions here: MHAWS NGL

XOXOX

Mirya