36.1. Reject
On the vicious cycle of rejection.
Writing will test you. It is an act of finding out how to exist at your minimum: where you let yourself be encouraged by little wins and tiptoe-steps forward, and try not to be blown back by unending gales of defeat. For a time this year, I was rejected for every grant, fellowship, award and opportunity I tried for. Then a win came — small — and a fresh new round of rejection. Nothing about this is unique to me; it is a fundamental part of being a professional writer. And, yet, in the face of so much rejection, I realized that to keep going, you must not allow yourself to feel like a reject.
I started writing about this process of rejection months ago, and then thought twice. Does anyone care? Probably not. I tabled it, and moved on.
Last week, I was making my social media rounds when I saw a string of particularly raw tweets from a young freelance journalist in New Mexico:
“I’ve been unemployed almost a year. I have a freelance work, but I’m finding it less fulfilling as time goes on. I feel like I’m nobody. I have nothing to offer anyone. This industry is awful. I’m so deeply sad, folks.”
I stopped and hovered over this thread, then read it again.
I felt every word of that tweet, and it gutted me to see someone say it. All this time, I thought I felt alone in the unique ways that freelance journalism can hollow you out, and here was someone saying they felt the same. It did not make me feel better to see this writer admit these things. It did not make me feel less alone. I wanted so badly to remind her of all she has to offer, and the cruel ways that the media industry will try to crush you.
I pulled up what I had written about rejection again. Gave it another read. And that’s what I’m sharing, in part, today. Maybe it is helpful for you, writer friends, to know that you are not alone in a hollow cave.