Why Rejection is a Critical Part of Success
Get ready, because I’m going to quote–well, misquote–Tony Robbins right upfront. This is something we writers need to hear.
Tony Robbins says in some multi-tape course that Angie has from years and years ago, that people who hold back their work, do not submit, revise endlessly, never spread their wings, these people are not afraid of failure, though perhaps that is what you might think. Instead, these people are afraid of success!
Let me admit that Tony Robbins speaks more generally when he described people afraid of success, and that I am working from memory here and translating into terms applicable to writers.
But the point is so applicable to us. If we were afraid of failure, we would be constantly putting ourselves out in the world. Rejection is such a crucial part of success, and people who are afraid of failure are as afraid of lacking rejection as they are of getting it—more afraid of lacking it.
You should be, too.
Not that I want you driven by fear. I want you driven by passion, by the thrill of being in conversation with the world, even if the low hum of rejection is always the background noise to that conversation. I want you to enjoy and expect success because you know how to go after it and how to survive going after it. How to thrive. Okay? You with me?
Here is what you need to know:
Three Ways to Change Your Fear of Success
- Nourish your vision of a richly rewarding, sustaining success. Conversations with other amazing writers. The moments when writing feels the way reading feels all the time—that immersion in story, in character, in world. The sheer pleasure of image, of language.
- Integrate rejection into your understanding of the conversation you are having with the world. It’s as if you are holding samples of material up and considering them as curtains for someone else’s bedroom. “This one?” you ask. The client shakes her head. Not quite right. It doesn’t matter that you hand printed it with an intricately carved potato. She’s thinking about the slant of the light, the rotation of the seasons, the color of the bedspread. “This one?” you ask. She tilts her head, considers, reaches for the next. This is what is happening when you are collecting rejections. It is so radically not personal that we often do not know what to do with them. Collect them by the pound, by weight, not my substance. Just as the cruel editor’s voice says terrible things but means only, “You are writing!” the rejections mean only one thing: “You are on the road to success! You are in the conversation. Your work is finding its way to the ones who will love it.”
- See your success as a way to participate in the world and help others. Those of us socialized to understand our own voices as rough and rude interruptions to what’s important need especially begin to see ourselves as ambassadors for all the work we love, past, present and future. Show up, connect with people not as a way of “networking” but as a way of being human, doing service, reaching out, being alive.
Do these resonate for you? What would you add? What would you commit to doing today to embrace your own success? Answer below. I’d love to hear.
Well, I work so slowly. That is, when I am writing fiction I work slowly. That is, when I am writing fiction I write fast but the work, the actual work, goes slowly. On the other hand, today while I was eating fish and chips at the Copper Kettle on Taraval Street the iPhone rang again and it was the co-writer and I answered it and was told the following tale: Our agent printed out our book proposal and sent her assistant to get it out of the printer and her assistant disappeared. After a while our agent went to the printer to see if she could collect the printed proposal herself and there was no proposal there nor was there any assistant there. She went in search of assistant and proposal and finally found the assistant huddled in a cubicle frantically reading the proposal, muttering words like Yes, yes, yes, this is great, I must have this book.
That was gratifying. I’m just digging on that little tale to embrace my own success. That book is not a book of fiction. That is a book of useful things, advice on how to finish. My co-writer and I think that we will be given money for this book which will then go to paying rent and credit card bills. That will feel good. That’s another way I’m embracing my own success. I’m saying to myself, See this credit card bill? It will be much lower when that money comes and I pay it. Other things, too. The person who said, When is this book coming out because I want to give copies to six of my friends for Christmas. I am using these little tales to ease the grinding sense of insufficiency and the maddening slowness of the fiction work. But as to the fiction work: two years ago an image of a young man carrying his father, fireman-carry-style, across the sloping green lawn of their waterfront Florida home, came to me, along with July 4 fireworks and a docked sailboat, and photos of a Chanteuse in 1940s Hiroshima and the phrase, “She could lock it down; she could hide a forest fire in a jam jar.” It took two years to realize the story was about a young man’s inability to say no to his father.
And, so, OK, I love the analysis of what we are actually doing when we submit a piece of work. I like the image of holding up pieces of material. That is lovely.
If I were really, really, really good I would send something out today. Wow. I have all these scraps of material. Maybe hold one up to the light and see.
This is lovely, and I know we need to be coached in this, in submitting and in being rejected. That is what separates a real writer, in the long run, from a could-be writer, who has all the most wonderful stuff worked out but only needs a few more months to make it sublime! I submit, in the past, but nowhere near enough. And I will submit in the future, and submit more. I still think of the older agent who wrote me after seeing a story of mine published (on the web)and wanted to know if I had a book on that same subject. No, I didn’t, but soon I will. And I will send it to him and anyone else who will take time to read it. In the end it’s why I write and I am finally getting back to it. I write to be read.
Thank you so much for this article. And thank you Cary and Leslie for your comments. I read the first paragraph and held my breath. I steeled myself for the slap across the face I knew was coming. That’s how much I hate the old adage “fear of success.” I know it contains truth. I always feel its a finger pointed straight at my nose. I never understood the term “to languish” until I”d failed to reach what I felt was my true potential as a writer. I have languished for so many reasons. Reasons related to life and, clearly, internal fears. I read the article and the thoughtful comments and decided to send myself a positive message. Thanks for the inspiration. I’ll post this on a wall where I can read it.
Here are two lists I dashed off after reading this post.
I write to share my thoughts with the world.
I write to be part of a conversation with the world.
I write to bring something of myself to a world that is immense and overwhelming.
I write so that my voice can be heard.
I write for my own sublime pleasure.
I dashed off the above and then thought:
I publish to share my thoughts with the world.
I publish to be part of a conversation with the world.
I publish to bring something of myself to a world that is immense and overwhelming.
I publish so that my voice can be heard.
I publish to earn the cash I’ll need to feather my retirement nest.
I publish so that my elder years will be filled with the sublime pleasure of living the writing life (writing, traveling, teaching, lecturing, accepting kudos and awards)
The last one had the butterflies in my stomach doing loops. I gulped and felt a surge of shame. I’m not supposed to “want” something from my writing. Writing is a sacred act for me. One does not sell what is sacred. One does not let others defile what is sacred.
I got some strange notions, let me tell ya.
I didn’t know I thought that until I just wrote it.
Whew…
What I know for sure, at this age. (61). They are only words. Soul infused words, lots of times, yes. But they are only words. And thank you Elizabeth for your lovely and apt metaphor. I myself enjoy holding them up to the light. I myself think yes this one, not that one. I erase them without a thought and begin over. They weren’t so precious to me when I began this writing journey. Somewhere along the way I crowded my life with them. I’m picturing my words, at this moment, as collections of porcelain doodads crowded on every surface of an old lady’s parlor. The light is dim. Windows draped with heavy curtains. She never goes in that room. But now and then she adds another word to her collection.
So now, I ask myself: Then why not open those curtains, shed some light in there? Share your dusty collection with the world.
I’ll keep trying to see if I can. Cause some editors are going to say: Outdated. This would have been lovely to have two decades ago. Out of fashion. I never did like that color. But some editor will think. This is a treasure trove, your collection. Where have you been hiding all these years? Love those colors.
That last makes me smile.
(I’ve been awake since 5AM structuring a scene. I’ll return to my work now. Work I will publish.