Rejection: A Playlist

It sucks, how do we deal with it?

So, let’s get this out of the way: rejection is the worst.

I have this weird little essay I’ve been trying to get published for a few years now, and it got rejected again last week. Normally, I’d wait to tell you about it until it got published so I could pull victory from the jaws of defeat (“see! just keep trying, and it’ll find its home!”) but who knows when that will actually happen! So instead, I decided to write about its rejection journey, because, based on conversations that I’ve had with a bunch of you lately, it’s rejection season and that feels pretty terrible.

The Little Essay that (Hopefully) Could. In 2022, I scribbled down some notes that would become this weird little essay. I wrote it pretty quickly, and I liked it. I shared it with a few critique buddies, and they gave me some feedback, which I took, and then they were like “submit this. Now. It’s great.” So I did, and it promptly got rejected three or four times. I felt sad. I hid it away on my computer and would occasionally think about it, but didn’t do anything with it for about a year.

In 2024, I took a creative writing class, and we were studying different forms—we got to a unit on the braided essay and it just clicked. My baby essay wanted to be something bigger, weirder. I spent six months intensively revising it, got feedback, people were like “THIS IS FUCKING COOL SUBMIT IT NOW” (this is what one person wrote, actually). So I got brave, took a deep breath, hit submit…

And it’s been rejected three more times.

To be clear, I love this piece. It’s weird, and I love it. And I’m confident it will find a home, somewhere, at some point…but that home hasn’t presented itself yet.

When it got rejected last week, I rolled my eyes, but it didn’t (really) bother me, which kind of surprised me. As I thought about why, I came up with this little typology of rejection responses. To be clear, all responses are valid! I’m not telling you how to feel! But maybe this gives you a sense of camaraderie and a way to think through your options.

Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash

Rejection! A Typology (And A Playlist)

The Sky Is Crying. This feels important to acknowledge first: Sometimes, a rejection really feels like it’s the end of the world, or the world as you’ve envisioned it. The last rejection of a job application cycle, a paper’s fifth (or tenth) rejection after extensive rewrites, having a huge grant that was the key to your sabbatical project returned without scoring (back when we had things like grants). A book review with blistering criticisms that makes it hard to believe the project itself has merit. Even though it’s a job, what we do never feels like only a job. But if you skim to the end of this, Beyoncé and I are here to tell you that things are better on the other side. But also, just sitting with an acknowledging the loss (maybe with a sad movie or some wine or chocolate) is totally fair. And then, we make a plan.

Anti-Hero (It’s me, hi. I’m the problem. It’s me). Other times, the rejection…might really be a tiny bit about you not being the greatest fit for what you’re applying for. Look, I applied for a million jobs at R1s knowing full well they wouldn’t hire me, but because I was convinced by the universe (ahem, peer pressure) that I should try. But I would have been miserable at an R1! Getting a job at a SLAC was a much better fit for me—my interests, my talents, my personality. Medium-sized fish hoping to splash around for a bit in a small pond? That was me when I was leaving my PhD program.

People quite often get demoralized because their articles are rejected from journals that they are pretty good fits for, in theory—but the article never frames itself as relevant to the conversations that the reviewers are interested and engaged it. Often times it’s because the person is writing about something awesome and niche that needs to be scaled up to become part of major conversations in the part of the field that journal engages. My point is this: sometimes rejection is the opportunity to figure out how to bring a better version of the project, or get a job that will actually fit your talents and skills, and that can actually be a good thing (in retrospect. You can still feel sad first. Wine might help).

Patience. I’ve been doing this editing thing for a while now, and it’s taught me something important: I’ve never encountered a project that felt unworthy of publication, but people come to me all the time with projects that aren’t ready for prime time (which is literally exactly when you should hire an editor).

But we send things out too early for lots of reasons related to the job market, tenure, and promotion. Like my weird little essay, sometimes things need to cook a little more. People ask me all of the time if I’ll edit books chapter by chapter, and my answer is almost always no, because this question is almost always borne of trying to get a book out the door, not to write the best book possible (I’ll write another post about this one of these days). So if early vibes aren’t great, let it simmer for a little while. Workshop some ideas, think about whether the book is a better article or the article a better book, read some smart stuff, and come back to it. It’ll find its time.

Irreplaceable (If it’s been 15 years since you’ve listened to this song, do it now. It’s a banger. I’ll wait). Look, the people who do the coolest, most interesting work are having the shittiest time right now. There are upstream and downstream reasons—it’s hard to get reviewers, good reviewers are burned out, editors are scared to take risks, fascists are defunding scholarship that actually matters, we’re back to only hiring white dudes who make fancy algorithms…it all sucks. So the truth is that yeah, some papers deserve to be rejected and need to be workshopped and you might not be the perfect fit for every job—but also, a lot of people who do really cool work are getting rejected an awful lot right now.

BUT. Good papers are still being published. Cool people are still getting grants. Smart people are still getting hired. There’s still hope—it’s just hard. So if you want to keep going, do it!! And if you want to nope out of it all, that’s okay—if getting rejected is getting under your skin, it’s okay to sit out for a bit (or for forever—start your own bakery! sell anti-DOGE merch on ETSY!)

(The reason it’s not bothering me so much that this essay is going through its rounds of rejection right now is because I know it’s good. It’s not everyone’s taste, but it is mine so I’m going to fight for it).

One final song

We’re Going to be Friends. Here’s my last piece of advice, my friends. Some people—rejection makes them miserly. It makes the feel like there’s only a small pie, and they need to save it for themselves. They start to believe that if they “play the game” and “are strategic,” the gatekeepers might leave the gate cracked just enough for them to slip through.

We’re not those people. We believe that more is more, and we reject scarcity politics—in academia and everywhere else. We know that when cool, interesting people get jobs, they hire cool interesting people. When cool, interesting research gets funded, those scholars are the ones sitting on panels, making sure that more cool, interesting research gets funded. We know that when cool, interesting books get published at top presses—you guessed it—it proves that those books can sell, and that more of those kinds of books should be published. Now is not the time to act like we’re fighting over scraps. It’s the time to weather rejections knowing that what we do matters, and if things are hard right now, we’re in good company.

Alright so tell me, what’s on your rejection playlist? And what does it take to brush it off and send that paper out just one more time?

Kelly

Hey! Need a community or an editor? I have some options!

Today is the *last day* for my fun summer discount!

So You Want to Write A Book?: A unique hybrid workshop dedicated to supporting writers throughout their book writing journey. Come join us in May! More info here, Register here [starts May 12, until May 7, Tier I is only $1750—a whole year of workshops and writing support].

So You Want to Finish (or Make a Lot of Progress) Your Book? An Advanced Book Writing Workshop. I’m so excited about this— a year-long, monthly workshop for folks with more advanced book manuscripts. One part troubleshooting/ accountability, one part advanced topics in book writing. We’ll start in May. Details here, register here. [starts May 8, until May 7, Tier I is only $750—a whole year of monthly book check-ins!]

A (very rare) summer Writers’ Circle. I almost always just host two writers’ circles a year—in the spring and the fall, but my sense is that people are in need of some community this year, so I’m going to host a very rare summer workshop in May and June. AND, by popular demand, there will be space for writing built into our meetings: so we’ll talk about writing, and then actually do it. Details here, register here. [Starts May 13. Until May 7, Tier I is only $550! A steal!]

We’re also open for new coaching clients, editing assignments, and book publicity relationships—get in touch!

You can see all of what we’re doing in 2025 here. Please note: I will be taking a summer pause from June 26-July 22, so I won’t be editing or meeting with folks during this time.