When Rejection Makes You Mad–And What NOT to Do about It

Being evaluated sucks. Whether it’s by a teacher, an editor, your boss, or the client whose hair you just styled, having someone judge your work is not a pleasant thing.

When their evaluation is negative, that unpleasantness can get ugly. I know this not only because I’ve gotten my share of rejections, but because recently, I’ve been on the receiving end of anger, as a university professor and as an editor.

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Not long ago, I received an email from a student fresh out of one of my classes. She was not happy. I was, in her estimation, a lousy professor and not a very nice person—unfair, unfriendly, and (horrors!) a teacher who doesn’t give a lot of A’s. It turns out, I, not she, was responsible for the C she got in my class. It’s so much easier to blame your professor than to realize you should have paid better attention.

Then, last week this happened: I rejected a poet’s submission to The Whirlwind Review—the online literary journal I edit. My reason had nothing to do with the quality of the work, as I made clear to the author. It was that the poem didn’t fit the issue’s theme.

When writers respond to my rejections at all, it’s virtually always with a cordial comment or two. But this poet’s response was anything but cordial. It was a whirlwind, all right: a sharknado of rage and accusation. He insisted I hadn’t even read his work and, bizarrely, that it was “bad form” to say I liked his poem if I wasn’t going to accept it. It included the all-caps claim that I was IGNORANT.

To be fair, the poet later apologized, but the harm was already done. He’d had proven himself unprofessional, and alienated an editor who probably would have accepted later submissions. A 20-year-old college student can be forgiven an occasional temper tantrum, but a writer should know better.

These two experiences made me think about what we can do when we feel angry with an editor—or anyone who has evaluated our work negatively. Aside from shooting off an email we’ll end up regretting, what can we do if we feel our frustration turning to anger? How can we keep our perspective—and our cool?

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Keeping in mind some basic truths about editors, the way they work, and the decisions they come to, can help. Here are 4 facts about the editorial process. Remind yourself of them if you ever get the urge to blow off steam in the wrong direction.

1. It isn’t personal. The editor isn’t judging you. She’s trying to put together a collection that is balanced and cohesive. He’s hoping to please readers and possibly a boss. The last thing thinking she’s thinking is, “I hate this guy. I think I’ll reject his excellent poem that would be a great addition to my journal, just out of spite.”

2. It isn’t pleasant for the editor, either. Grading is the only part of teaching I hate—and rejecting authors’ work for TWR is even worse. There may be professors out there who enjoy giving bad grades and editors who take cruel pleasure from sending rejection letters, but I’ve never met one. For most of us, it’s awful. 

3. Everyone’s been there. Everyone’s been rejected in one way or another, and that includes the editor who just turned down your beloved essay.

Every semester, I tell my students about the teacher who drew a giant red X across an entire page of my story so they can remember I haven’t always been a professor dispensing grades from my tenured throne. I, too, have been a student hopefully turning in papers and dreaming of A+’s like the little boy in A Christmas Story—and I’ve been a writer receiving rejection after rejection. We’ve all been there. Every one of us.

4. It doesn’t mean your work isn’t good. When I’m editing an issue of TWR, I have dozens of things to think about, and only one of them is the quality of the work. They include things like:

• I received 53 haiku for this issue. That means I’m sending out at least 50 rejections, regardless of how good the work is. 

• This essay is perfect, but the theme of this issue is animals and the essay is about the author’s grandmother, who didn’t even, apparently, have a dog. 

• Why did I get three stories of exactly the same length and similar style from different authors all in the same month—and which one should I go with?

• How many poems about butterflies can I include in a single issue?

As you can see, my decisions, like all editors’, are much more complex than: “This poem—good. That poem—bad.”

Any relationship involving evaluation of one person’s work by another—teachers and students, editors and writers, employers and employees—is a delicate matter. Venting your frustration through anger and invective will only complicate things. Curse the editor to yourself. Use his picture as a dartboard. Grumble to your friends. But keep your behavior above board—it will serve you well in the long run.  

 

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