A Perspective On Rejection By A Fine Essayist

Kaori Fujimoto says:

In my 20s, as a student and young working adult, I applied for numerous part-time or full-time jobs only to be turned down. At one point, after successive rejections, this thought came to me: “That they don’t need me means I don’t need them.” I also believed that a job that would serve me best would come my way, and sure enough, I always found one.

Looking back, while I applied for many jobs as an inexperienced student or university graduate, I couldn’t afford to mull over if I really wanted these jobs. All those applications were like numerous darts I threw without aiming properly at the target. The jobs I eventually landed, including ones I ended up hating, invariably helped me develop my career as a translator and grow as a person, probably in the way that the jobs that rejected me wouldn’t have. What I should have done as a job seeker was to take aim. But then I wouldn’t have learned this lesson had I not received numerous rejections, so I had no regrets.

Yet I had to learn the same lesson all over again in my middle years as an essay writer. When I started out, I would finish an essay and submit it to several publications. When all of them rejected the piece, I sent it to more venues only to get another batch of rejections. One of my earlier pieces received nearly 20 rejections before it was accepted; some lucky ones zero or only one, which is still extremely rare. It took me a while to remember the lesson: Take aim. And I should give more thought to whether I really wish to see my work in the publications where I’m about to send my piece.
But then again, I wouldn’t have learned the following additional lessons without all these rejections:

- The number of rejections an essay has received doesn’t diminish the feeling I have for it. All my pieces are equally important to me, probably like all her children are to a mother.

- I should start a new piece while submitting finished ones. The more I write, the better my insight grows, which helps me see what changes I should make to the older pieces that have received rejections. Some of my essays were accepted after I made changes this way.

- This may contradict the above idea, but sometimes it is better not to write if I have to force myself. I’m a human, so I have my own emotional ups and downs. Forcing myself to write means I’m mistreating my human self, who should always come before my writer self so that I can achieve the purpose of essay writing: to share the idea and emotional aspect of what it is to live as a human.

- This may again contradict the previous idea, but sometimes I should just open a working draft on the computer and play around with words, even if I don’t feel like it. When I do, I often find myself typing away, fully absorbed. This is also the moment I renew my awareness that I’m inherently a writer.

- Some essays just don’t work. No matter how much I like the settings and characters, I can’t have enough faith in a piece and it never finds a home when I’m not completely clear about what I want to say through the work or when I’m not honest enough. Conversely, if I have enough faith in a piece, it will find a home.

- I never know where a rejection leads. A publication that rejected one of my essays went defunct a year or so later. Another piece that got rejected by numerous unpaid and little-known markets eventually found a home in a well-paid and well-known publication. When I look at the list of my published essays, I clearly see each of them has found the right home—just as I always landed the right jobs. All the rejections by publications were perhaps these essays’ refusals to settle there and pleadings with me to wait until the venues that suit them best come my way.

It is the greatest pleasure to see my work sitting comfortably in the right place. At this kind of moment, all the rejections I have undergone with the pieces only boost the joy of creation.

Kaori was interviewed on this blog in 2018 regarding the reasons she writes.. You can read her thoughtful answers here.

Bio: Kaori Fujimoto is an essay writer and freelance translator based in the Tokyo area. She lived in the US and spent a lot of time in Europe to study, work, and loaf when she was young and still travels to cover a wider area of the globe. She has degrees in international relations and English literature and was a fellow of the Paris American Academy Creative Writing Workshop. Her work has appeared in Brevity Nonfiction Blog, South Loop Review, Easy Street, Punctuate, Peacock Journal: Beauty First, Star 82 Review, Wanderlust Journal, and other publications and anthologies.