Coming back after rejection
Before - and alongside - success comes rejection. So, how do you keep going when it's knocked you to one side?
I’m not sure what’s worse, in response to a pitch: an outright no. A maybe that leaves you hanging. Or being ignored, which leaves a little flicker of hope glowing inside even though really, you know it’s a lazy no.
When I was starting out as an author, pitching to agents and editors, I kept a folder in my emails called ‘rejections’. Here, I planned to store the first few rejections so that when I was a really successful author, I could reveal them and everyone would go:
Oh look!
Only, the rejections poured in so fast, and long before any commissions, that the folder was stuffed to bursting and I decided it was no longer a cute pre-success idea. And that actually, I’d be better off storing the nice emails in a folder called ‘special’.
(That one’s still going.)
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told no, been ignored - by people who don’t know me but also, who I’m already working with or worked with in the past - or given a this sounds interesting and then followed up again and again but nothing comes of it.
But I can tell you that if I hadn’t kept going, I would never have had three non-fiction books published, or any of the articles I wrote as a journalist. I wouldn’t have grown a community on Substack of 10,000+ or a business or have a book coming out in 2026.
I say this again and again, in my journalism course, Substack course, ‘how to make that dream come true’ course: you cannot give up, you have to persevere, persist, experience rejection and failure and keep pushing - harder, harder harder. Keep going.
But what I haven’t ever said, I don’t think, is that you don’t have to do it straight away.
When I nearly got a poetry book deal with a ‘big five’ publisher and it was then sharply pulled away, I nearly cried. I rarely cry, so this was - for me - a strong reaction. I felt devastated. Like the greatest dream had just gone up in smoke. I couldn’t speak.
It wasn’t until four years later that I started pitching out my poetry collections again. Four years. That’s how long it took me to recover. To feel my confidence returning. To decide that maybe it was worth another try. To admit it was still my dream.
Though, in the meantime, I had continued to publish my poetry online, on Instagram, which helped me to stick with that writing practice, but also, to get some feedback - in the form of an algorithm - on my poetry. And: it helped with my latest book pitch.
As I teach in The Creative Way (to be a freelance writer) - and wrote about in this piece - you have to keep doing. We mustn’t let rejection or failure stop us from creating. Instead, we keep creating and in time, when we’re ready, we pitch again.
I think there are different level of rejection and failure, though. A casual conversation that doesn’t end up leading somewhere is on the lighter side, while it can feel more bruising when a near-deal is then retracted.
And it also depends on how much time and energy we’ve committed.
When pitching to write articles, I might send out one pitch and get the commission straight away, or I might send 10 pitches before anyone responds. Sometimes, I have to drop an idea completely and try something else.
But these pitches don’t take days or weeks, like a book proposal. So, it’s frustrating but I will keep going. Whereas with a book proposal, I’ve sometimes created a 10,000-word pitch. Then, if it doesn’t happen, it feels heavier. I need a little break, after that.
Total failure
When I launched an online course and 0 people signed up, I felt pretty flat. I took some time away from launching courses. I looked into why it might have happened and tried to use the reasons to lift my feeling of failure. But it lingered there.
In fact, I haven’t done any big launches in quite a while: maybe that’s why? I probably started telling myself stories like: I don’t even want to run courses, I just want to be a writer. But the truth is: I love doing both writing and teaching. So, that was a lie.
Sometimes, to know if you still want to do the thing that has been rejected, it can help to have a quiet moment, close your eyes and to think through various related scenarios and see how your body responds. I loved these prompts from
.It’s amazing how we can deceive ourselves into believing we didn’t even want it anyway to protect our ego. But when we shove ego to one side and think more deeply - drop into the soul - that’s when we can access the truth about what we want next.
If you’ve recently experienced rejection:
Know that every successful person has experienced many rejections.
It doesn’t mean you’re not good at what you do.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the idea isn’t good enough.
It means that that person wasn’t the right one for you.
And it’s worth trying some others.
It might take lots of pitches to get a yes (again, some of the most successful writers were told no by all the publishers before one took a chance and helped them to create a bestselling book).
But it’s ok if you need a break, first.
Maybe you could create your own ‘special’ email folder, for the kind and encouraging words people share about you and your work.
Return to the ‘special’ folder after a rejection.
Keep creating, in the meantime. Do it for your community; do it for yourself. And do it, because it may well help you to get that commission, down the line.
Annie x
Thank you for this Annie and thank you for linking to my prompts too. I really believe that if we tune into what it is we want to do and it feels right in our bodies…and it keeps returning to our thoughts, even when we try to push it away, then that is what we are here to do. If we keep creating in our true frequency, the right opportunities and people will come. But we have to keep doing the thing. In the doing, the creating, our frequency becomes stronger. x