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Rejections: There is no such thing as an artist who doesn’t encounter them.

Voltaire called Shakespeare’s Hamlet the “work of a drunken savage.”  The San Francisco Examiner told Rudyard Kipling that he “didn’t know how to use the English language.” Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead was rejected because the editor thought there would be no audience for it. (“It won’t sell” was the verdict given to a book that has been in print for more than half a century, and sold tens of millions of copies around the world). 

And on and on and on. (If you don’t believe me, check http://tinyurl.com/653uao, which culls some of the rejections and reviews from Rotten Reviews & Rejections, edited by Bill Henderson & Andre Bernard. http://tinyurl.com/66xmxc)

So when we get those ugly little “thanks but no thanks” missives, we can soothe ourselves that we’re in good company. Even so, rejections can be hard to take. Here are a few things to help you get through them — and learn from them:

• It’s not personal. Truly. A rejection simply means that on that day, that particular editor or producer or director or gallery owner did not see how taking on your project would enhance his or her business. There could be a thousand reasons, and many of them have nothing to do with you, the quality of your work, or its ultimate marketability.
• Rejections means your work is getting out there, getting seen. It is knocking on doors, introducing itself to the artistic community at large.
• Sometimes people who can’t use your work today are kind enough to give you some hints as to how you might make it more marketable, or how you might improve it. Take these suggestions to heart: Most editors, producers (etc.) are far too busy to waste the time it takes to write such a critique on someone who they don’t think has promise or talent.  
• Success is often a numbers game. You’re working your way through the no’s to get to a final yes.
• “No” doesn’t ALWAYS mean “no.” Sometimes it means “try again later.” I once had an editor call me a year after his supervisor had rejected a piece of mine: She was gone, he was now in charge, he remembered the piece and liked it and wanted to buy it. Editors change jobs, magazines change focus, bars change managers, galleries change owners. If you’re convinced a project has legs, send it out for another walk around the block.
• Look for patterns. If you get 20 rejections and every single one of them references the same specific flaw, you might want to take another look at your project and see if there’s a way to fix it.
• The person sending the rejection may be a complete fool. At least YOU don’t have to live with having been the person to turn down “Harry Potter.”