Facing Rejection

Earlier this school year, my seventh grader jumped in the car after practice and saw my jumbled piles of rewritten query letters and lists of agents. She looked at me and asked if I would cry if I got rejected by an agent. She’s thirteen, and to a young teen, rejection is THE.WORST. THING. EVER.

But guess what? Rejection is inevitable. They say that the average writer receives anywhere between fifty and one hundred rejection letters. I’m about ready to send out my query and that means when I open my inbox throughout the next few months, I’m more likely to receive e-mails starting with… “I’m sorry, but…” or “It’s not the right fit,” or “No thanks,” than I am to see, “Love it! Send me your manuscript!” Sounds like an exciting spring for me, right?!

I could curl up in a ball and hide under my bed until next fall, or cry, or tape my rejection letters to the wall and throw darts at them.

I thought about all this as I pulled out of the school parking lot. Someday my daughter will face rejection. I want her to know that rejection doesn’t mean that life is over. I want her to know that you can face rejection and grow from it, you can use it to make yourself better, it can make you stronger, and it can lead to other opportunities.

I told her a few stories of my own rejections, disappointments, and doors that had closed, only to find that God had been faithful and used those rejections to do something greater. I explained that I’ve spent a lot of time not only praying about my book and my writing, but also about the process of finding an agent, and that faith is trusting that God would open the right doors and close the wrong doors.

The querying process comes with a mixture of hope and excitement and, if I’m honest, a little fear, but I keep these words by Shauna Niequest taped to my desk, which are a good reminder of the attitude I want to have.

She says, “I’m practicing believing that God knows more than I know, that he sees what I can’t, that he’s weaving a future that I can’t even imagine from where I sit this morning