inne
Posted : 12/3/2007 11:39:52 PM
Rejection is hard. It is and it can take a long, long time to not be devastated by it. Sometimes it never gets easier. But that's part of publishing. I'm a writer and have published a bit as have many of my friends and I don't know anyone who takes rejection particularly well. Some people develop personal ways of dealing with it, like collecting all the rejection letters or burning them or shredding them or wallpapering a closet with them or whatever. I used to cry my eyes out when I got rejection notices, but it got easier after my first publication (in some awful literary magazine a million years ago). Poetry is an especially hard market; I have several friends who are in some of the best MFA programs in the country, producing amazing work and they get rejection notices every day.
The best thing you can do if you want to publish is avoid setting yourself up to fail; know what kind of work is being published by the magazine or journal you are submitting to, submit appropriately and don't count on getting published. Find your own place. There is brilliant work being produced that is rejected again and again because there's limited space, it doesn't fit into publication guidelines, it's not marketable, etc. Most of the time publishing is very specifically a business and the economics of art dissemination is very often at odds with the production of art. I think understanding this is really important to help ourselves deal with the business of publishing.
Something that helps a lot of writers is participating in a writing group so you can talk through these frustrations and fears and anxieties and also the joys of writing and publication with others and get advice and support. You might also want to take the chance to workshop your writing, but workshopping isn't for everyone.
I used to make zines when I was younger and still really appreciate zine culture - that kind of self-publishing can be awesome, as can the whole zine community.