on surviving rejection

I’m an over sharer, an anxious mess, an ex publishing professional, a screenwriter, short story writer, personal essayist and a novelist (The Lamb & more soon).

This is where I come to pass and receive nervous notes and be transparent about my writing and my wobbles. It’s part diary, part scrap book, but mostly a collection of extremely nervous notes scribbled down.

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Disclaimer: I’m not a therapist, psychologist, or scientist etc. These are just my thoughts on what rejection means and why I think it impacts us so much.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about rejection. Specifically:

1. That awful, overwhelming sinking feeling it elicits followed by the impulse to curl up, hide and make myself as small as possible (which I realise is an extreme, rather animal response to receiving what usually arrives in the form of an email).

2. That its inevitability comes not only from creative pursuits but also from our social lives and professional circles, and is therefore impossible to out run or hide from.

3. And that, no matter how much it happens to us, it still finds a way place doubt where there should be courage. To instead, have us believe we’ll never do anything of note. That we’ll be forgotten about, unremarkable, and left to gather dust upon a shelf somewhere.

Poetry and Protesting left me this ‘nervous note’ and of course, I felt it my duty as someone who often also feels very ‘</3’ and ‘ugh’ about rejections to reply with some thoughts. So, Poetry and Protesting, if you’re reading this, here is your virtual hand squeeze and 'you got this' message from your resident expert in rejection (because believe me, I’ve had my fair share).1

Rejection is the act of refusing to accept, consider, or use something or someone. That’s what a dictionary will tell you about the meaning of rejection. It gives the autonomy to the rejecter, rather than the rejectee and obviously doesn’t pose anything about the feelings that come as a result of it, which usually manifests as a profound sense of shame, heartbreak, and embarrassment due to having shared something vulnerable or tried only for someone to say: no thanks x

Let me introduce you to The Big Feelings Department. The BFD for short. (It’s not lost on me that the abbreviation of the big feelings department widely translates as big f*cking deal).

The BFD is the name I’ve bestowed upon my messy emotions. Those all consuming, impossible to curb, intense animal instincts. Depending on the circumstances, the BFD might trigger shock, fight or flight, adrenaline, worry, stress, intuition, and maybe, if it’s feeling particularly frightened, all these experiences all at once.

It may come as a surprise to most that I still cycle through these emotions regularly because I’m a bestselling writer who should be grown up and know better than to be honest about feeling the aforementioned on a very public Substack post. Alas, here I am. Worried and anxious and frightened every time I feel rejected or compare myself to another writer.

In the soft fleshy folds of your brain, I want you to imagine this:

There’s a small room at the very back and it’s filled with files, old computers that are hanging on by a thread, a neglected plant that hasn’t seen water in a decade or two, a bruise-like damp stain which haunts the ceiling, and a nervous admin assistant who’s been drinking copious amounts of espresso on drip since the day you were born in order to keep you alive.

That admin assistant hasn’t taken a break. They’re constantly on high alert, searching for the next threat: The virus that could shut down essential organs. The snake that’s been hiding in the grass. The figure who’s been following you two streets now and hasn’t veered off onto their own path.

The admin assistant of the big feelings department is your survival instincts.

They keep you alive. They taught you to cry when you didn’t have words because that’s how you’d signal to other, more grown up homo sapiens that something was wrong and that you needed help. And their Big Feelings Department would usually answer the call.

Look at that! Two incredibly competent admin assistants speaking to one another to fix the problem. Yay!

At this point, you’re probably wondering what the link is between a snake in the grass and receiving a “no thanks x”2 email?

We are social creatures. A bajillion years ago, I can only surmise3 that ‘failure’ meant you were no longer useful to the social unit. Your value would have decreased. (Maybe you couldn’t defeat the mountain lion or bring back meat for the group’s pot luck). But now, in 2026, it’s rare (though not impossible) that you’d find yourself in situ with a mountain lion. The predator has vanished, but our instincts remain the same.

Cue: mountain lion. Social acceptance.

Rejection is the new social predator. Overdosed on coffee, the BFD’s admin assistant is fighting for their life when you get those “no thanks x” emails that harmlessly pop up on a random Friday afternoon right before the weekend. I pose we see something similar in our creative jealousy too, and often wonder if it’s unlocking the hunter/gatherer mentality somewhere deep within my brain - that each time I compare myself to someone I deeply admire, that the anxious ancient human in me knows there are finite numbers of berries and is worried we might starve if we don’t have exactly what the other writer has.

Those big intense feelings you have, they come from longing to be to be seen and accepted by others. Often, our stories and poems come from a vulnerable place. They are ways of us making sense of the senseless and telling others our story: please, God, I hope you understand me because I am giving you the most fragile piece of myself. If you do not understand me, then please simply accept me.

I hope you realise just how remarkable it is we stay persistent and keep our longing alive to share our stories and poems and art - even in spite of the endless onslaught of online negativity and industry rejection. That’s a sign that there’s still some courage left in the tank, and that it’s not been entirely overcome by self doubt.

You now have one job: to remain soft, to hold your bravery, even if that goes against your instincts. To remain vulnerable with words. To keep finding ways to tell your story. To keep submitting your writing. Sending out queries. Discovering new poems and stories you may not have even realised were hidden within you, but could only be exhumed by that opportunity passing you by. And most crucially, your job is to remember your why.

Your why is the single sentence that surmises why you write in the first place. It might be a description of a feeling or a calling or a question. It might be something that irrevocably changed you. It could be anything. Whatever the case, write it down, put it somewhere you can see it every day. Your why is your compass for navigating all this: where capitalism and opportunity meets art.

I often feel it’s not the rejection or comparison that’s difficult to manage, but that our disappointment stems from something else entirely. That perhaps what’s more difficult than being rejected is trying in the first place, even when the odds of being able to connect with the right reader, someone, anyone, point to failure.

That is called hope or the indomitable human spirit, if you like, to try even when the odds are against us. But believe it or not, there’s not a lot of that going around these days, so if you have it, you’re in possession of something quite precious and rare.

So, let’s go back to the start. I’ve been thinking a lot about rejection lately. Specifically:

1. That awful sinking feeling it elicits - something that only happens to signal how deeply we care.

2. That its inevitability comes not only from creative pursuits but also from our social lives and professional circles because rejection can only happen when we put ourselves out there to try.

3. And that, no matter how much it happens to us, it still finds a way place doubt where there should be courage. But hear me: you will do something of note. You won’t be forgotten. You are entirely remarkable. You’ll not gather dust upon a shelf.

All I can tell you is that it will be okay, even if you’re beginning to believe that perhaps it won’t be. Now, this is what I want you to do:

Feel your feelings.

Hold them tight.

Remember your ‘why’.

Do something kind for yourself.

Write down three things that make you feel hopeful about the world at large.

Feel the sunlight on your skin or smell the fur of your cat’s belly.

Take a deep breath the outside air.

Write something on paper, even if its just your shopping list.

Try again tomorrow.