Rejection - another cause of a U-turn

Talk about a U-turn. This must be my week. Here I am facing that U-turn again, and I need to find a way to work myself out of it.

It is so easy to get in the rejection doldrums. Any little thing can set it off – an unreturned telephone call or email, someone saying they’ll do something and they don’t, and of course that actual dreaded rejection letter.

I’m sure most of my creative readers know what that dreaded word is about it. You’ve probably experienced it. I know I have. I actually got sixty-eight rejections (by actual letter or by silence) before I got a publishing contract for my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On. So I thought I was immune to it. Turns out I’m not. Rejection hurts.

In the last month my work has received two rejection emails. And since these rejections were from anthologies I’ve been featured in before, my first reaction was Whoa, what am I doing wrong here?  I better stop and rethink my course of action. Did I just say I’m taking a U-turn? I think so.

Getting rejected from a stranger is bad enough, but getting rejected from folks I already have a relationship with hurts all the more.

Up until the second rejection arrived yesterday I had been planning to submit to a couple of poetry contests. Now I’ve decided not to rush into those submittals. I’m going to take my time, do a little more organizing and editing, and maybe – just maybe – submit when the hurt has died down.

In the meantime, I’ll take a few deep breaths and keep writing. What else do I have to do?

The Artist's Way: the creative U-turn

I think it’s time to get off the subject of The Hunger Games. I’ve had just about enough of the hype. The children love it and I’ll leave them alone to experience it – as it should be.

I need to get back to basics – my writing life. Yesterday I felt like my writing life had taken what Julia Cameron calls a creative U-turn, in her best seller, The Artist’s Way. But, thankfully that mood only lasted a day and a half. My creative U-turn came about because things I’d planned for regarding my memoir are not going to happen as planned. It put me in a blue funk. It made me think, what’s the point of all the work I’m doing anyway?

But this morning I listened to Cameron words: “Once we admit the need for help, the help arrives.” I got back to my desk, made some calls, sent some emails, got the answers I needed, and voila, my mood is back to creativity again.

I know this sounds vague. I’ll get more detailed in the future. Please stay tuned. And keep your creative career from making that creative U-turn. Remember every creative career has it failures. We must accept them, work through them, and not let them get in our artist’s way.