Resiliency (aka being prepared for the kick up the butt you need)
In the face of rejection, take the leap before the kick lands
I’m finding that I have sparks of inspiration to write here when a lesson lands. Today (Thursday) it is an immediate realisation so I’m jumping on it to make the most of a nice early Friday message to you. If you’re not a paying subscriber (don’t worry, many of you aren’t!) then please consider if you’d like to join in. All encouragement is much appreciated.
Rejected but resilient
Back to the point. Late last night, I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t heard about the longlist results for a novel competition I entered at the start of the year. I had a fruitless search about, figured that they hadn’t announced it yet, and vowed to keep an eye out. Then this afternoon I got a message from a fellow writer to say she’d not been longlisted, had I? I found the post announcing all 16 of the longlisted writers, and confirmed that I hadn’t been, and neither had the three other writers I know that had entered and encouraged me to do the same.
I could have responded to this rejection of my novel in a few ways. In fact, I’d had all of these responses in the past.
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