Hi Daphne,
Thank you so much for your interest and effort in the application process. Unfortunately, we have made the decision to not move forward at this time. Ultimately, we had so many qualified applicants and a very limited number of positions.
Blah. Blah. Blah.
Sincerely,
a nice enough editor who didn’t send a computer-generated email
I clicked away yet another rejection email. For a few minutes, I gave in to another round of silent meltdown, another thought of giving up on this writing career sh*t. It doesn’t even pay well, I sneered. Pretending like the 50th rejection didn’t hurt, I went about my usual day. Practice self-love, they said.
My egocentric, naive self thought it couldn’t be that hard to find a full-time writing job in New York, where one could find most major publications and seven million people who were more talented. Once I came back to New York, I started applying for jobs frantically, only to later realize that my resume keywords weren’t even searchable by computer algorithms. There went my first 50 enthusiastic resumes and cover letters, as well as my motivation.
I then put the job hunt aside to focus on my summer writing classes where I met some of the loveliest writers, who also shared my eternal worry of: “Am I just a shitty writer who ought to pick up a career in carpet cleaning instead?” But my professor reassured us that, hey, you’ll be surprised how many idiots are running the journalism industry — and you’re better than them.
Regaining confidence from the love of my feature writing (/therapy) class, I threw myself at the potential heartbreaks and rejections again. I refined my resume and made sure it was readable by computers. Only this time, I was getting real rejections without any excuses. It wasn’t just submitting my resume and not hearing back because no one ever saw it. On a brighter note, I did get phone calls and requests to complete a few writing tests.
The most lengthy writing test lasted 3.5 hours. Glassdoor reviews had forewarned that this publication often stole pitches after rejecting applicants. But I was going to be the chosen one despite all odds. My birth chart indicated nothing but good fortune.
…and golden girl, were you wrong.
I received instead an electronic wave of polite no’s informing of their robotic regrets, leaving ripples of shame in my hollow, self-absorbed writer brain.
However, I found one particular rejection from a literary agency puzzling. Upon reviewing what I thought was a brilliant, insightful book pitch, the interviewer rejected me despite the good rapport we had developed during our interview.
“I’m afraid the standard of the other applicants was very high, and your writing test didn’t quite make the mark,” she wrote in her email.
My heart sank into a black hole of self-loathing. Her rejection email sounded personal. I assumed it was because we had built a virtual relationship via our pleasant chat and emails. She had higher hopes for me, and her disappointment was seeping through the lines into my inbox.
Hold on — my “writing test didn’t quite make the mark”? I’ve run that pitch through at least four to five writers and non-writers — I was even impressed by my own writing.
Desperate for an answer, I emailed back to ask for editorial feedback. Did I take the wrong approach? Was my writing just horrible? I needed to know if I was ungifted and should stop myself from writing before spending the rest of my 20s in delusion. Just let this editor turned literary agent lady sentence my passion to death.
“The writing was very professional but it was more the thought behind it? You are welcome to do another test to prove me wrong!” she wrote.
My writing wasn’t very professional, but too professional. I took the conservative approach and played it safe by writing elegantly. But I needed my words to come alive with my personality.
In the end, reader, I proved her wrong (I’m Jane Austen-possessed right now).
What survived the summer of rejections were one published feature and one job contract. A small step forward after slipping a thousand feet. This 2018 summer marked by a long stretch of failures is only the beginning of a writer in the making. Failure is what a writer awakes to and sleeps with. Rejection is what she eats for breakfast. Humiliation is whom she dances with around the dinner table, nightly.
I’ve read about many published authors recounting their hundreds of rejections before a fleeting moment of redemption.
If anyone wishes to learn humility, try being a writer. Hoping to move someone with only words and paragraphs, trying to keep one’s attention with punctuations when an Instagram selfie would have served the purpose better, that is, the most stubborn desire and the stupidest passion in this world.
And despite that, the writers write on.
