Something I hear about a lot from people in my workshops and via email is how hard it is to deal with rejection (and I know quite a bit about it from personal experience, too). There is a way to shift our perspective that can be useful. For example, let's say you've been submitting your novel and getting rejections. Your energy and motivation will stay high for a little while, then probably it will begin to sink and you start wondering whether the book is any good, whether anybody will ever like it enough to want to publish it, etc. Here's how that might look on a chart:
When your energy and motivation run out totally, you stop submitting the manuscript. Not a good feeling! But in fact this task is only a part of the process. First you had the idea, then you developed it, maybe into an outline. Then you wrote a first draft, second draft, maybe third and fourth draft. At each of these stages you may have had some doubts and energy loss, but as you achieve each stage your energy level gets higher again. Submitting your manuscript and harvesting a bunch of rejections is only one stage of a longer journey. When you see it that way, it might look like this:
Looking at it this way should help you realize that the low energy you feel during the submission/rejection stage is temporary. And you know what? After your energy zooms up when you get a publishing offer, there will STILL be times when it will go down again--when the cover the publisher decides upon isn't really what you had in mind, or when the marketing push they promised you doesn't materialize fully--and those also are just a part of the bigger process.
But, I hear some of you saying, what if nobody ever does want to publish my book? Then, if you believe in it and yourself, it'll be time to get excited and energetic about self-publishing and enter another phase of ups and downs!
