Writers, Dealing With Rejection Should be Your Middle Name

Rejection can come in many forms, but you can’t let it dim your creative spark.

Rejection can crush your ego.

As a writer you’re all by yourself. Be it while brainstorming ideas, creating outlines, or crafting a story — you do it all alone.

There are days when you’re unable to finish a story for days — even when you thought it’d hardly take a few hours.

And when you finally finish a draft and show the courage to publish, your article falls flat.

This is all in a day’s work for me. I’ve been a full-time writer for three years now, and I still face rejections every week. These rejections come in many forms — let’s talk a bit about them.

Rejection from publishers or clients

Not everything you write will be accepted by publishers. 

Sometimes, you’re asked to edit your piece or redo the story.

But it’s worse when all you get is a blunt ‘not selected’ response with no feedback. It can take a toll on your creative self, leaving you wondering what the issue was — the topic, the tone, or something else.

Sometimes, rejection feels like a personal failure. You pour a part of yourself into everything you write. Your drafts matter to you, and rejection can crush your spirit.

Rejection from readers

Even if your draft makes it through the publishing process, there’s no guarantee it’ll resonate with your audience.

You might not get the engagement you were expecting. Readers might just scroll past your article, and your content could get lost in the digital noise. Or even worse, they leave harsh comments that break your heart.

It takes courage to protect your inner writer from this.

Internal rejection

There’ll be days when you become your biggest critic. You feel like no sane person would want to read your work. The imposter syndrome kicks in, and in comes the debilitating self-doubt.

You keep hearing, “Do you even know how to write? Are you really a writer?”

I sometimes fall into this loop of self-doubt, even though I’ve been writing online for a decade.

Such personal rejections lead to excessive self-editing, constant self-criticism, and procrastination. It can feel like a never-ending battle.