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Rejectomancy

I first heard this term several years ago when discussing rejection letters with a friend. I know that every writer gets rejection letters unless they're self-publishing. I know it's part of the ritual initiation of being an author. I understand getting rejection letters is supposed to be a badge of honor; that authors are supposed to wallpaper their rooms with them and celebrate them. But in practical fact, I find it very hard to deal with. This makes it difficult to even send things off in fear of being rejected.

Hence "rejectomancy". Rejectomancy is that fear, not only that one you be rejected, but that you will be rejected because your writing is bad, that you have embarrassed yourself by sending it, that no amount of work will ever make it better, and that you're a horrible, talentless hack. It takes the beginning point of an editor not liking your work, and goes on to follow the twisting path down the worst possible implications and outcomes. It's magical thinking in the worst sense.

I deal with it in a number of ways. Paper rejections (less common now than even ten years ago) head off to my best friend's mailbox, where she will read it and tell me if it's a good or a bad rejection (good rejections include the personal I got back from F&SF, bad rejections are often "check the box" form letters). Email rejections I skim, after steeling myself against the idea that I'm getting a rejection, so that I can get used to things in two steps rather than getting slammed with the rejection full-force.

Having a novel out, I tend to doubt my ability to engage others in my book, even knowing that it's largely a matter of marketing. "Damnit, Jim, I'm a writer, not a publicist!" It's one of the problems of small-press publication (and self-publishing -- I'd really hate to have to deal with that!) Much of the publicizing has to be done by people who are in an entirely different field.

So why am I writing about this now? Because I got hit with a bout of rejectomancy yesterday in a different form. I've been plugging away at getting bloggers to review my book. Mostly I'm just not hearing back from them, which is annoying, but which many of them are up-front about -- if they don't take the book, they just don't respond. That's discouraging enough. But I got a very curt "take me off your list" response yesterday, when I had no idea of why I received such an abrupt response. It caught me amidships, and upset me mostly because I'm not sure what I did. And rejectomancy -- that uncontrolled slide down the mountain of self-doubt -- immediately went to work.

I'm beginning to see this principle at work in my life in many different ways. Having severe anxiety and OCD, when something sets the wheel spinning, I go with it, and have to fight to get off. Not that clinical anxiety is necessarily required for rejectomancy -- it's part of a normal cultural tendency of self-doubt that plagues our society -- but it certainly greases the hamster wheel. It's important for me to separate out what I can and can't handle, and figure out ways around what I can't. Yes, in a perfect world, I'd be with a major publisher and wouldn't have to do my own publicizing, but it's not a perfect world.

So I say to rejectomancy: "I acknowledge you. I understand you. And I will not be defeated by you."

After all -- my stories are worth fighting for, even if the enemy is myself.

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