Rejection Hurts!

Telling those who aren't finalists in the MPH-Alliance Bank Short Story Competition what they already know ... I saved this link up specially.

Rejection affects the human brain in same way as physical pain notes Self Publishing Review [found via Literary Rejections on Display blog - where else?] citing a study by a UCLA-led team of psychologists :

Rejection, a writer’s fate. Whether impecunious and unpublished or Pulitzer-prize winning and flush, the encounter is inescapable. Unless the writer is a “fulltime” masochist (“part-time masochists” are hereby exempted) the meeting is rarely stumbled upon or bumped into. Rather it’s a consequence traceable to the writer’s own exploits. It comes after months of research, followed by years of writing and rewriting. It comes when the pandemic self-doubt that is manifestly rampant in the writer’s head during the writing process, suddenly peters out, shape-shifts, and re-emerges in the form of unrepressed self-esteem. This cryptic and schizophrenic phenomenon occurs in syncopated climax with the writing of the two most mesmeric words in the writer’s lexicon: The End.

And it is in this gluttonous – perchance self-delusional – state that the writer dares to think the work all-out brilliant – surely worthy of representation and publication. So convinced, the intrepid writer takes that fateful flying leap into the duchy of literary agents and publishers – the very locus of the infamous Mr. Rebuffer, and his Gongoresque rejectionists-in-training. The writer includes the compulsory SASE with each manuscript, though certain none will be returned. Then the writer waits. Assuming that the odds of enlisting an agent and getting published are working against the writer, there are two scenarios afoot: Immediate rejection or delayed rejection. Either way, it hurts – literally.

And there are suggestions for accelerating the healing process, which includes the instruction :

Luxuriate in self-pity. (Sad music is an expeditious and freely accessible portico into this seemingly bottomless abyss. Suggestions: ‘Hurt’ by Johnny Cash or Nine Inch Nails. ‘Concrete Angel’ by Martina McBride. ‘Hallelujah’ by Jeff Buckley. ‘Back to Black’ by Amy Winehouse. ‘The Promise’ by Tracy Chapman. ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ by Sinead O’Connor. ‘In the Real World’ by Roy Orbison. ‘Gloomy Sunday’ by Billie Holiday. ‘Drugs Don’t Work’ by The Verve. ‘Lonely Day’ by Systems of a Down. ‘Creep’ by Radiohead.)

The post concludes :

In the end, though physical and emotional pain may technically register through identical mechanism, “rejection” may, in fact, serve the heroic writer well . . . by strengthening both heart . . . and mind.

(Pic from Literary Rejections blog)

Publish Your Rejection Letter

... it is not easy to achieve and balance the two central goals of a truly accomplished rejection letter: trying not to make the writer feel distraught whilst also discouraging him or her from ever contacting you ever again.

Jean Hammer Edelstein on the Guardian blog reflects on the delicate art of composing rejection letters (of which she's had plenty of experience!) after hearing about a new collection to be published by Random House in 2010. (Perhaps you have some you'd like to contribute? Ted Mahsun I know has been collecting rejections.)

Grateful I am to Edelstein's post for pointing me in the direction of the Literary Rejections on Display blog which has some most enjoyable stuff on it and is bound to make the great brotherhood (and sisterhood) of rejectees feel better. I particularly loved this "standardized punch-list rejection form".

Could Rejection Slips Be the New Viagra?

Thanks Sham the Gene Girl for sending me this gem.

Locus Online has a report on a paper published in the Journal of Sexual Function.

Rejection slips stimulate libido, according to a paper published yesterday in the "Rejection Anxiety and Sexual Response in Speculative Fiction Writers," caps a nine year study jointly funded by the Institute for the Study of Sexual Behavior and the Science Fiction Writers of America. "The idea that performance anxiety plays a key role in sexual dysfunction is well established in the literature," says J.O. Bromfield, the study's lead researcher. "However using psychophysiological methods, we found that literary anxiety was often associated with an enhancement of response to sexual stimuli." Three focus groups involving 73 men and women (median age 34.3; range 24-75) participated in the study. They included recent Clarion, Odyssey and Creative Writing MFA graduates, attendees of the Sycamore Hill, Rio Hondo and Blue Heaven writers workshops and Nebula Award winners.

You can read the rest here.

Young Ted might be the man to watch (or watch out for) then since he has the largest collection of any Malaysian writer from prestigious publications around the globe.

Rejected Not Dejected

Fairy godmother was playing hard to get just now.

Poems I'd sent out ... all rejected. *sigh*

One of them interested the editor, but she said that "a greater degree of
restraint might have made it a better poem".

She goes on:"With a strong submission list this time round, I regret to say we're not able to offer publication."

Rewriting needed then. No problem.

Pick myself up. Dust myself down. Send out poems for the next edition.

I feel on much safe ground with fiction. Both writing it and critiquing it.

But poetry is so much harder to shape.

It's easy, I mean, to arrange words on paper and call it a poem. And call yourself a poet.

But it's so much harder to create the good stuff. For which there is honestly only one true measure of quality:

Does it give you goosebumps?

Because you feel good poetry in your body.

And then your head won't let go of it. You have to internalise it, because it says something that your recognise right there in your soul, and you haven't heard it expressed in any other way.

There are poems I carry in my head, because I need them. Because they've changed the way I see the world.

That's the kind of poetry I want to write.