A BLOG FOR READERS AND AUTHORS OF MTV BOOKS

The MTV Books Blog will close on October 31. Follow us to our new home at YA Outside the Lines on November 1!

Monday, June 28, 2010

How to handle rejection like a professional published author

1. Call critique partner. Whine.

2. Tell critique partner you need to get off the phone so you can go cry.

3. DO NOT CRY.

4. E-mail agent. Whine.

5. Text husband. Whine. Strangely, husband claims later that he never received this text, though he responded to the one you sent right after this about your son's friend insisting that you crawl onto the roof to retrieve his Nerf darts.

6. Run five miles.

7. Clean. Vacuum or mop every floor in your house. Dust furniture you didn't even know you had. While cleaning, think to yourself, "It's good that I get rejected every once in a while. Otherwise the baseboards would never get scrubbed." Also: "I am so glad I am a professional published author. If I'd gotten this rejection before I was published, it would have taken me months to get over it. But now...gosh, I hardly feel anything."

8. Eat your own weight in ice cream.

9. Sleep.

10. Wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, almost as if you were never rejected, and your beloved main characters were never shot execution-style and buried underneath your front lawn.

2 comments:

Stephanie Kuehnert said...

This sounds pretty similar to how I deal a lot of the time, though it's usually hard for me to get over it in one day. Maybe I need more cleaning or soy ice cream :)

Jan Blazanin said...

I wish I could get on board with cleaning when I'm feeling down. My house would be spotless!. Instead, I'm more the eating-my-weight-in-ice cream type. Wouldn't you know it?