A man who's collected 21,000 rejections? What a loser, right?
Nope, very, very wrong.
Jacob M. Appel is a doctor, lawyer, bioethicist, author, professor, and tour guide. He has seven master's degrees, a JD from Harvard Law School, an MD, and is a practicing psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
His short fiction has been published in 215 literary journals, his debut novel won the Dundee Prize in 2012 and raves from Philip Pullman and Stephen Fry. He's published 16 books and written ten plays. Next month he's making appearances at literary events in Connecticut, Virginia, New York, and Ohio.
Can we agree this guy must be a genius?
Maybe, then, you'll be surprised to hear that in addition to all his awards and accolades, he's had 21,000 rejections.
That means he's submitted work 21,000 times (actually more, because not all were rejected). He's 46 now.
I don't know at what age he started submitting work but let's say it was early, at 16. That's 30 years. That's 700 submissions per year, about two per day. And he still had time left over to become a doctor, lawyer, teacher, and tour guide.
Very few will ever match Appel's abilities and achievements, but I think there are four things we can learn from him:
- You have to produce.
- You have to get it out there.
- You will get a lot of rejections.
- You can't let the rejections stop you.
