Goodbye the year of rejection

Now let's get 2024 off to a flying start using those rejections to light the fire.

Photo by Danil Aksenov on Unsplash

Hello and a “Merry Christmas!” as this will be my last post of 2023.

I love that we have reached that point of the year where many of my clients are coming back to my emails with “let’s pick this up in the new year”. Wonderful. I can fill my final hours of 2023 by Thursday this week (the 21st) and then I am signing off until the 2nd Jan 2024. How exciting.

As a freelancer, I very rarely take time off. In fact, my last real break from work was when we went to France in June. Yup, a whole six months ago. I am so looking forward to logging out of emails, deleting social media apps and cracking open a tin of Pringles and the Prosecco, as I watch my children run around with all that festive energy that us mums don’t seem to have.

I am also looking forward to drawing a line under a year of rejection.

Before we proceed any further with this little love note to the year that taught me A LOT, I want to be clear that I am one of those people who love the whole “new year, new me” farce. I know a lot of us don’t enjoy it and now my social feeds are filled with: “new year, same me”, and this is fine! If you don’t like to see the new year as fresh start then carry on as you are and good for you. But personally, I DO see it as a new chapter and my wish for the new year is that I am leaving my run of rejections behind me. Hopefully.

So, I will share with you the reactions I have been hit with this year and then explain why, after having a good sulk about them, I will use this as fuel to kick start my new year with lots of positive intentions whilst being kind to myself.

Rejection hits hard, and my good friend

Claire Venus

writes very openly about her rejections for arts funding and how it effects all aspects of our lives from home to work. Rejection come in different forms of course: relationships, work, funding applications, promotions (or not), submissions of projects we hold close to our hearts, house moves, travel… the list goes on and I am almost certain you too have had some kind of upset, disappointment or set back this year. Whilst I was obviously very sad for my friends who have also faced rejections, a very small part of me thought “at least it isn’t just me”. Is that too selfish?

On the day I found out the three children’s books I had entered into a prestigious competition, had all failed to make the long list, I was stood in a bus station on my way to a roadshow for children’s writers. I wanted to cry but standing so close to a complete stranger, also waiting for a bus, I felt like a couldn’t. I then contemplated just going home. I was obviously a fraud. A failure. I shouldn’t attend this roadshow, pretending I knew all about children’s books, should I?

Luckily, at that moment the bus pulled into the stand and without realising what I was doing I climbed on board, paid my £2 and found a seat next to a steamed up window. I was going after all.

Turns out, I do know a lot about children’s books, as I sat and listened to editors and authors talk. Five years of research and over ten years of reading them to my children and in a pre-school, meant I have the right tools, I just haven’t “got lucky”. So many people in the room that evening, talked about rejection. Rejection from agents, publishers, competitions, writing opportunities and organisations. Again, I wasn’t alone in my disappointment and feelings of just giving up. One inspirational children’s author, talked about imposter syndrome and encouraged us all to keep our heads down and plough on, because at the age of fifty he finally made it. Yikes, I am thirty-two and not sure if I can take another twenty years of “just trying”. But it was still so reassuring to hear.

I have sent manuscripts off to agents over the last five years, and this year I really thought I had nailed it. The stories I’ve written hold a special place in my heart, so to send them out and be hit with a barrage of “no thank you” emails, was tough. It made me moody and probably not a nice person to live with for a few weeks while I moped about in a huff. But, I know what my big dreams are, I write them down every new year and they have been the same since Christmas 2016 - the year my second baby was born.

I also received rejection in work when I sent off ideas to my clients and they didn’t like them. This was equally hard but I have learnt to let the upset go. We all have different creative ideas and of course, when I am working for other people, I have to accept that they may not like my ideas and I need to be more in tune with theirs.

My plan for 2024, is to network more, take part in more courses and give it all another go. Whilst the hit of rejection is very hard, I do also love the thrill of sending something off with the anticipation that THIS time might be it. The golden egg. A bit like an adrenaline rush but for writers.

If you have faced rejection this year, why not use the new year as a “wipe the slate clean and try again” mentality? The time off between Christmas and new year, gives us time to re-group, switch off from all the noise and really focus on ourselves and what we want and perhaps what we need to achieve this. I find it hard when I am working to really focus and then become overwhelmed. The impending time off will be my re-set button. My failures from this last year are my learning curves. So if the time when the time, finally comes, I know I have worked hard to earn it. Perhaps that will be even more satisfying, in the end.

Beth Kempton

talks about the “hush” between Christmas and New Year. Give her podcast a listen or better still, sign up to her winter writing sanctuary. She generously offers this for free and I loved it last year. I created my own space amongst the extra toys and Christmas paraphernalia, to write next to a candle, with a hot mug of coffee, before the rest of the house woke up. It was the perfect way to make space in my head for new ideas, explore words and dream.

It is a superb time of year to start again.

Sending all my love and warmest wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Love Beth x