Writing Tips: How to Deal with Rejection Letters

Rejection letters are a staple of the writing career. It doesn't matter how good you are, how amazing your story is, or even if you've already got several publishing contracts under your belt. A little while ago I interviewed my mother, Maryjanice Davidson, on this blog, as she's a New York Times bestselling author herself. One thing she says all the time is, "I've gotten so many rejection letters that I could make a wallpaper from them and cover every wall of my old Boston apartment."

And before you ask: yes. Twenty plus books on the NYT Bestseller list and she still gets rejection letters. 

And that's okay! Rejection is a part of life, after all. It's just a slightly bigger part of a writer's life. So get comfortable with it, because this relationship is going to stick around for a while. 

The first thing you need to do: stay calm.

Getting rejected by a publisher is not the end of the world, and it's not the end of your writing career. It just means that you haven't found the right publisher for your particular manuscript. 

Think of finding a publisher as house-hunting. There's a lot of time spent online doing research, you're probably going to want to find an agent to act as your guide, and there's going to be a lot of rejection. Sometimes it's because you don't like the house. Sometimes someone else swoops in right before you can sign the paperwork. Sometimes you find out you can't afford it.

Feel free to grumble, complain, and vent. Then once you've got that off your chest, go back to the computer and find another publisher to submit your manuscript to. 

Remember that it's nothing personal.

Editors get a shit ton of manuscripts every day, and they can only accept a limited amount. This is why, when you get that dreaded rejection letter, it's usually very short and vague. It's all, "We can't accept it at this time" or "It's just not a good fit." There's rarely any constructive criticism or feedback that we, as authors, could potentially use to improve the story. There's just not enough time in an editor's day to do that. (This, personally, drives me up a wall. Even though I get why editors cannot possibly give such feedback to every 'script they reject, I'm a sucker for constructive criticism and hate it when I don't get it.)

How do editors decide which 'scripts make the cut? Well, that's a little complicated. I'm no editor myself, but here's what I've heard second-hand:

1) They want what's going to sell.

Editors want to read a good book, for sure, but quality isn't that important. At least, not in the way it is to us artsy-brained writers. You could submit the most intense, insane, engaging novel, but if the editor doesn't think their publishing house is going to be able to sell a lot of copies, you're going to get rejected. 

A lot of it has to do with the market. Remember when vampire stories were freaking everywhere? The audience for that was huge. But now? Not so much. 

It's all about supply and demand. Editors look for types of stories that are in high demand, whether that's grimdark/realism or more light-hearted fantasy. So long as it fits in with the needs of their publishing house. Speaking of which...

2) They want manuscripts that are best for their publishing house. 

This is why researching a publisher before you submit anything is so important. Let's say you have a post-apocalyptic YA novel. Would you submit that to a publishing house that specializes in historical dramas? Of course not. Genre is very important. Just as writers specialize in specific genres and stories to tell, publishers specialize in specific genres and stories to sell. 

So the historical drama house rejected your 'script. Shocker. But that's okay! You've found another publishing house, this one specializing in YA novels that have a lot of action, adventure, and cute romantic subplots, all of which your book has in abundance. You submit it and think, They're going to love this! 

Aaand you get rejected.

But why? You've matched the genre to the right house, and even the type of story they like.

Well, the thing is, this publishing house has been doing a lot of post-apocalyptic books. They don't want their readers to get bored, so right now they're looking for YA urban fantasy novels. 

Does it suck? Yes, it does. And getting rejection after rejection does wear on you. This is why finding a literary agent is so important: they can help you side-step a lot of these issues. You'll still run into them, but not as much. 

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Do not give up.

I'll give you a personal example.

​One of the publishing houses I've worked with in the past, Less Than Three Press (I wrote a novella for them that got in one of their anthologies), recently came out with a call for submissions. They wanted stories about shifters--i.e. werewolves, werecats, etc.--with disabilities. Any disability. And since they specialize in queer fiction, several major characters had to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community. 

I was all over this. I've spent the last two years working as a community support staff--that is, a job coach and PCA for people with disabilities. I'm always down to write about characters in marginalized communities. And I've worked with LT3 before and knew that not only do they pay well, they're also very competent.

Now unfortunately, these calls for submissions have deadlines. Although I heard about it relatively early, there was still only two months for me to write, and I work two other jobs, plus this blog and YouTube channel. Nevertheless, I managed to crank out a fun story about an ordinary, asexual human trying to survive college who finds out that the girl with social anxiety that he has a crush on is a werewolf, and she's playing cat and mouse with a hunter a god complex.

I sent it in the day of the deadline and went to take a long nap. 

About a month later I got an email from the editor. 

It was a rejection letter. 

BUT. But, this rejection letter had something so few of its brothers have. It had constructive criticism. The editor found two glaring flaws that barred it from acceptance, suggested that I fix them now that I wasn't adhering to any type of deadline, and told me to re-submit as a general submission. 

Now remember: editors don't have time to do this kind of thing. So when they do take the time to offer some feedback on your manuscript, you shut your mouth and listen. 

I took a few more months to fix the story, going over not just the problems the editor pointed out, but others that I found and just didn't have time to address with that pesky deadline. Once I was satisfied, I re-submitted. 

About a month later I got an email from the editor. 

It was a contract!

So now the good people at LT3 are editing my 'script, and soon enough I'll be bugging you guys with promos about my new ebook tentatively titled Hunted.

Rejection letters suck. They can wear on your self-esteem like a river cutting a ravine. But they're also what separates the "aspiring authors" from the actual authors. Take criticism seriously and apply it to your story. Keep looking for agents. Keep submitting to publishing houses. Just keep going. 

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(By the way, I highly recommend you guys check out LT3's website and stay tuned for further calls for submissions. They do them constantly, and while they're pretty strict about focusing on queer characters, they accept pretty much any genre. It's a great way for new authors to step into the game, or veteran authors to try something new. Also, the books are really good and really cheap, so it's a playground for readers, too.)

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