The Importance of Rejection Letters

I sent in a short story to a literary magazine and January and heard back from them less than a week ago. Actually, I had completely forgotten about submitting to them so when I was told that no, they didn't want to publish my work, I didn't really feel bad about it. However, this is not always the case with writers and sometimes a rejection can be absolutely devastating to an up-and-coming author.

Many people only have their friends and family read their work, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The 'bad thing' is that these people often are overly nice in order to spare the writer's feelings, not understanding how detrimental it can be later. Say the young writer named Jane gives a story to her friend Rose. Upon Jane's request, Rose reads it with the purpose of providing feedback. While the piece isn't necessarily bad, Rose feels that it is too forced in areas and doesn't have a real connection with the main character in Jane's story. Instead of telling Jane this, which will help her improve the story in question as well as any future stories, Rose says she had no comments on the story so far and wanted to see more about it. This may seem like a little white lie common to tell a good friend, over time it accumulates and can lead to poor writing and extremely negative reactions to receiving criticism.

There was a story posted very recently about a woman who received a very harsh one-star review on her book and instead of shrugging it off, the author commented on all of the woman's reviews, stalked her social media pages, and actually pretended to be someone taking a census-type survey so she could get the woman's address and confront her face-to-face. These are the kinds of situations that can come from not giving writers proper feedback.

This is where rejection letters come in. I have seen many-a-writer consider giving up the passion all together because they got six rejection letters in a row. While it can be a deterrent to a young author to be told. "No," so many times, it shouldn't be enough to put you off entirely. However, due to flowery, "Oh it's so good!" comments from close family and friends, they are not used to hearing negative stuff about their work.

A rejection letter doesn't even mean that the story is bad, per say. Look at the Harry Potter series, which is widely regarded as one of the best series of all time. It was rejected many times before publication but JK Rowling persevered on until she got that ever-so-important, "YES! WE WANT YOUR BOOK!"

Too many authors strive for that, fail, and give up. Even though it is important to give very honest feedback rather than sugar coating, it is also important to be given a negative response to an inquiry every once in awhile. Why? Because it pushes you to better your work so the next letter with be the one every author has been waiting for.