Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: no matter what degree of success one reaches as a writer, there is never a time when everything feels easy.
Obviously I’m not a famous or rich author; maybe after achieving that everything does become easy. But from my own experience and conversations with published and agented writers, ones who’ve been objectively successful, this is what I’ve learned:
Someone will always do better, write faster, sell faster and for more money. Someone will always criticize and dislike your work. And there will always be insufferable waits: for responses, for a contract to be finalized, for money to come through.
So it’s important to figure out how to deal with these things—envy, rejection, and long waits—and forge on despite them. The first step is recognizing their inevitability.
But before talking about solutions, I want to talk about the problem. To be clear, I’m not dwelling on this to be discouraging. I want to share these emotions to vent—and so others in the same boat might feel less lonely.
a black mile to the surface
This is the title of an album by Manchester Orchestra, as well as lyrics in “The Gold,” also by them. (I recommend both the original and the Phoebe Bridgers version.) It’s how I feel a lot of the time—that I’m sinking beneath not only failure, but also all the time and effort that I fear will never come to fruition.
I want to be clear: I’m fortunate. I was chosen for Pitch Wars, without which I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to learn the skills necessary to find an agent. I’m lucky to have an agent. And I am truly happy to see friends succeed.
However, all of the above doesn’t banish the sense of failure.
Some envy is nonsensical, masochistic: such as looking back at what I’ve already achieved and comparing. “I spent four years on my first book and it went nowhere, while someone got an agent with their first book.” “So-and-so had twice the amount of offers I got.” I want to cull these thoughts, because I can’t go back and change my querying journey. I tell myself once I move to the next step—getting a book deal—these thoughts will die, but I suspect they’ll morph into different comparisons.
The envy stemming from looking back is easier to ignore; there’s much I’m grateful for, after all. The present and future are what make me feel shriveled with envy, exhausted at wondering how much longer do I have to wait.
Because I have waited. Not as long as many people, I’m sure, but while others in my Pitch Wars 18’ class have sold multiple books, I’ve been in stasis for five years with Shimmer, a book I love but have lost hope in. I’ve watched people I was neck and neck with become bestsellers, while I’ve received minimal interest. I have friends who started out later than me whose books sold in weeks; I rarely wonder whether a late reply is coming or if I’m being ghosted, because I assume I’m not worth a response.
I’ve heard people say and have it said to me that as an agented author, rejections should burn less because I have an industry professional in my corner. That’s true when the editor list is long; the first few rejections are just part of the game.
But when the list is dwindling or I’m told “I can’t market this book” repeatedly or I’m on the last round of sub, having an agent is a band-aid on an arterial wound.
The solution is simple. Write more books. One of them will be the one.
I do believe the best antidote for the negative emotions in publishing is to always have something else in progress. However, while others are writing multiple books per year, it took me multiple years to squeeze out one book. And while Poppies brought me back to writing, I’m struggling with the next thing.
Because I’m burned out from completing six drafts in 1.5 years.
Because I’m worried all of this is wasted time when I already have so little of it.
Because what if the next one won’t be the one? What if the one after won’t be?
What if none of them will ever be the one?
Even though every day I tell myself surely this is the one, sometimes I can’t shake the conviction that Poppies too will die. Even worse, I fear I will fall out of love with it.
Rejections will pile up until I view Poppies the way I often view Shimmer: with sorrow, with pain, and with a flinch of you’re not good enough; I’m not good enough. And while I wrote Shimmer in university, I wrote Poppies while working full-time, often writing myself to exhaustion and sacrificing family, friends, weekends. And so I not only fear I will lose my pride and love for this story—I fear I will come to resent it.
All this is compounded by how much time everything takes. Though publishing is a whirlwind of activity and everyone racing to get work done, it moves at a terminally slow pace to the individual. I know the waiting is universal, yet the deluge of announcements and good news from others’ makes me feel like I’m running in place while everyone else is racing past me.
I feel like I’m always waiting. For myself to get words down. For beta feedback. For my agent’s edit letter. For editor responses.
In this miasma of fatigue and ill premonition and eternal waiting, how do I write the next thing? How do I read deal announcement after deal announcement without feeling unworthy? How do I compartmentalize my gut-punch yearning of when will it be my turn from my genuine joy for friends’ successes? How do I wake to a rejection in my inbox (time zones…) and not immediately think here we go again?
Sometimes, when I’m struggling just to fit in writing without asphyxiating on my own exhaustion, I think quitting would be so much easier. But I’m in too deep. I’ve done so much, sacrificed so much. I have a public writing account and writing friends and an agent…how do I quit without disappointing myself and those who believe in me?
So I continue, tired and envious and malcontent, cramming writing into my schedule like an overfilled luggage threatening to burst open at the seams, all while wondering:
Will any of this will ever amount to anything I can hold up to people who don’t understand the inherent pleasure of creativity and say look, I succeeded?
It’s so easy to cling to the belief a book deal will rectify everything, but I once believed that of getting an agent, too. The truth is the difficulties don’t end with one success, or two, or even a string of them. There’s always more to worry about:
The rejection of receiving criticism. The limbo of waiting for responses and wondering if your agent and editor and marketing team, etc, secretly hate you. The fear the book won’t sell well and no publisher will ever buy anything from you again. The dread of never writing anything good ever again. The envy over other writers being bestsellers when you can’t break out of the midlist.
I don’t know if a solution exists for these difficulties, and I can’t pretend I’m dealing with them better than others. But I want to figure out how.
coping with the inevitable
I’ve mentioned the best remedy for envy and rejection and long waits is to always have something in progress. But I’ve also mentioned the difficulty of continuing to write in the face of…well…everything. So I want to talk about things that aren’t simply pushing to write the next thing.
First, though it’s depressing how universally sucky publishing is (at all stages), I also think there’s comfort in knowing that even authors who seem to lead a charmed life are not exempt from negative emotions and rejection. They, too, have struggled and are still struggling. They just might not show it to the world.
So tip number one is this:
Beneath the gleam of success, we all have trials. You are not alone.
Are our trials the same? No.
Depending on skin color and sexual orientation and health and income and where we live, our struggles will not be the same. I’m no stranger to the bitterness of seeing a success story that doesn’t feel deserved or reading a book that, when I’m in my worst moods, make me want to scream if THIS can get published, why can’t I?
But here’s something I think is important to remember:
The imbalances in publishing are systemic; no individual writer is the enemy.
While there are individuals who do deserve to be shamed, I try my best to not fall into a spiral of bitterness and lash out at the people I’m envious of. I remind myself that their success does not exclude mine, and their failure wouldn’t have translated to my success. I don’t want jeers to tail my success, so I don’t want to jeer at others.
Beyond that, however, I think an excess of bitterness can lead to losing the ability to improve craft—the only thing we have full power over in publishing.
So here’s tip number three:
Focus on what’s controllable: your craft and your definition of success.
Interpreting rejections is tricky, especially as a marginalized writer, and it can be a tough balance between not using your identity as a shield from constructive criticism and contorting yourself to the point of losing your originality and voice.
Though improving craft, it becomes easier to recognize whether rejections are constructive or subjective and biased (and therefore from someone you don’t want to work with anyway)…which helps mitigate the dejection stemming from them.
(I’ve also written before about dealing with criticism before.)
I also never list goals that rely on outside validation anymore, because I’d rather compete with myself. I didn’t complete a draft from 2019 to 2021—at least I’m back in the game. I took a two month hiatus but I’m writing (slowly) again. Hallelujah!
I still yearn for validation. However, aside from mentally categorizing these as dreams rather than goals, I’m also trying to redefine my idea of success by lowering the bar.
Too often, we look toward writers who got major deals or an agent in a week, and we feel small and unaccomplished. But they’re anomalies. If we could observe ourselves from farther away, simply writing a book when most people never finish a draft is a success. Simply getting an agent or publishing a book is incredible—how many people in your everyday life manage that?
Unfortunately, there’s a limit to how much we can do internally to improve these emotions, and that leads me to tip four:
Find safe spaces to hide in and people to vent to.
One of the worst feelings is waking up to rejections in your inbox and then logging onto social media and getting hit with deal and rep announcements, and feeling like you’re choking on envy even as you’re typing out heartfelt congratulations.
I hate it when the valid emotion of when will it be my turn mutates into why do you deserve this more than I do. Yet I can’t control everything my brain makes me feel.
I prefer to remove myself from these situations. Avoid social media while I’m stewing in my feels. Delay congratulating acquaintances and even friends until I know I’ll mean it fully. Mute the #celebrations channel on discord or bow out of a group chat where everyone else is succeeding, or ask people to take it to those channels or smaller group chats.
Another thing that has helped is finding close friends who I can vent to freely, who I can display my petty and bitter side to without judgement, who won’t say “just be grateful for what you already have.”
I understand the urge to post publicly and seek wider sympathy to gain that assurance of my book is good and this rejection is unfair. But it can lead to witch hunts and pettiness and misinterpretation until we’ve lost the narrative entirely. It can lead to authors who have struggled feeling attacked for finally succeeding, or invalidated for still struggling despite objective success. It can also lead to people telling you you’re wrong to feel bad, and no one needs that on top of everything else.
Therefore, while it’s not wrong to post publicly, I do think it’s risky and requires filtering, which no one wants to do while feeling like a turd that got drop-kicked, and so it’s probably best to take these emotions to close friends first.
(This is not to say to avoid calling out misbehavior that needs calling out.)
This is getting long, so here are some active things I do to make publishing a bit more tolerable:
Create joy: rejection rewards, positivity boards, & blackout poetry.
Since my querying days, I’ve gotten into the habit of rewarding myself for every rejection. If you, like me, feel uncomfortable spending money in correlation to writing despite not earning anything from it, my suggestion is to consider: What have I wanted for a while but have been denying myself?
For instance, my work flats have cracked but are still serviceable. Well, I need to buy a new pair eventually. Why not now? Maybe I’m already planning on buying something, and will now allow myself to indulge in an upgrade. Or I’ve been pushing myself too hard lately and want a pizza and movie night.
I’ve also developed the recent rejection blackout poetry trend into a habit. The very first thing I do is screenshot rejections and toss them into my ongoing Canva design, and figuring out how to turn into funny blackout poetry helps distract from the rejection sadness and inject a bit of humor into the situation. Some recents:
Finally, creating a positivity board is pretty straightforward: screenshot album, google doc, notion board, etc. My only real suggestion would be to hold back on putting in everything. Instead, jot down positive comments when the waiting gets too frustrating or a rejection lands in the inbox. (I find the act of inputting compliments more invigorating than simply reading them over again.)
There’s a common sentiment that every part of writing is the hardest part. Drafting is the worst. Revising is the worst. Querying is the worst. Sub is the worst. The debut year is the worst. The second book is the worst…
I don’t know how to stretch out successes until they extend into every difficult part that comes after. My “tips” mostly keep me sane and not necessarily happy or content—but I think if this post helps you feel less alone, I’ll feel it’s served its purpose.
Final suggestion: go do whatever you’ve been putting off to make time for writing. Vacuum the floor or water the plants or catch up on an assignment. It might not help with the writing feels, but it’s a lot better than simply sitting and stewing, and also helps with the feeling that everything in life, not just writing, is in shambles.
I waited too long to read this but it's so poignant and I'm sure your tips will help others! 💖