Writers' Past Hurts and Lessons Learned

 

So many past hurts haunt us for decades. A grade or middle school teacher's casual, unkind remark about a project you worked hard on might keep you from ever wanting to try again. I once interviewed several writers who started writing later in life. More than one mentioned 

a teacher squashing their desire to write. 

The teacher who praises a child's writing boosts their ego and gives that child the desire to continue writing. The one who makes a cruel remark about the quality of a child's writing is sure to extinguish any flame for writing that child might have had. Sadly, those teachers whose remarks are hurtful might not ever realize what they had done. Encouragement is always better. Even if they say something like, "You've made a good start here, but perhaps you can add ..." 

Let's consider that you continued writing as an adult, and you've submitted multiple times with no luck in getting published. Your submissions are either lost somewhere in an editor's delete box or come back to you with a 'Sorry, but...' We all know rejection is a part of this writing game, but it doesn't mean we have to like it. It hurts and disappoints us.

We must learn to evaluate the rejection. Maybe not on the day it arrived, but a day or two later. If you're lucky, the editor added a note giving a reason for the rejection. Those added notes can help you learn something. What if you had an editor tell you that he/she liked your topic but felt you'd only skimmed the surface, that you needed to dig deeper? Your options are to send the piece as is to another publication or spend some time adding more depth to the article or essay or short story. Which way will benefit you the most? One is going to take more time and effort than the other but will also give you a better chance the next time you submit it. 

Even those rejections that don't come with any explanation or are never answered in any way can help you learn something. Once you get over the disappointment, take a step back and give an objective look to the submission that didn't make it. It's not always easy to be objective about your own work, but you can do it. Do try to submit to another publication.

Another way to make your submitted piece better is to ask a fellow writer to take a look at it. Perhaps someone in a writer's group you belong to, or a close writer friend. They can be objective more easily than you can. You do need to be willing to accept whatever criticism they give you. Keep in mind that they are trying to help you. 

We're humans who have feelings, and they get hurt sometimes. Writers need to work on pushing the hurt aside and concentrate on what was learned. No matter how many years we have worked in this craft of writing, we can continue to learn.