Rejection Letters

Rejection letters.

We all get them.

And we all hate them.

Not much we can do about that.

But while we're hating them, we can also learn from them.

I'm writing this because I was recently tasked with being the one to write the rejection letters, and it wasn't something I wanted to do. Like I said, none of us like rejection letters. But what I hadn't realized was that writing them is almost as hard as reading them -- and it helped me to learn something of vital importance to the future of every writer out there (and artists, and probably some of you others out there).

Rejection letters are important.

Usually, when you get a rejection letter, the reject-ers don't let you know why they're reject-ing. It's true, and it's annoying (Mavguard Magazine isn't like that, in case you were wondering: I actually sat down and wrote out ways to improve every piece that was rejected).

But it's those monotonous rejection letters that help us straighten our back and get better at the things we're doing.

The more rejection letters you get, the harder you try to create something worth publishing.

The more rejection letters we find in our inboxes, the more patterns we find in the things being rejected.

Those patterns, those harder attempts at creation, are what eventually come out to be beautiful art.

And they never would've come to be, if it wasn't for the letters.

Trick is, we can't let the rejections stop us from sitting down and putting in the time. If we don't try, if we don't do everything we can to keep our art thriving in our own minds, then the rejection letters have won and we've become nothing more than that: a reject.

Promise me you won't let that happen. Please.

[love]

{RD}

p.s. if you're curious, most companies actually do write down why they don't accept your work for publication -- some of them will even send you that information, if you request it after receiving a rejection.