Rejection

In some form or another, nearly everyone has experienced rejection of some kind. It may be from a group of friends, a person you were romantically interested in, a club/team/organization you wanted to participate in- to name just a few. But, for those individuals who are writers, rejection can come from publishers, reviewers, and the public.

One writer who I was shocked to learn experienced rejection from publishers was L.M. Montgomery. L.M. Montgomery wrote the novel Anne of Green Gables as well as the follow-up series and dozens of other books. This novel, considered to be one of the classics, was actually rejected from 5 different publishers. Four of them returned it, as she wrote "with a cold, printed note of rejection" and the other only gave it "faint praise". Five different publishers. She was so upset that she placed the manuscript in a box and didn't look at it again for quite awhile. When she later found it, she re-read parts of it, and not changing a thing before re-submitting it to another publisher, and it was published. What an incredible story. It just goes to illustrate the subjective nature of writing and that TIMING is critical. It was rejected by 5 publishers and so she could have deemed it as worthless, but she just needed some time to recover before submitting it off again.

L.M. Montgomery wrote about this story and also the story of her career as the self-titled The Alpine Path. This autobiography is a candid retrospect of her childhood, young adult, marriage, and success after several novels. When she was first asked to write this series of autobiographical articles about her "career", she was surprised as she felt "Could my long, uphill struggle, through many quiet, uneventful years, be termed a 'career'?"

When she was a young child, she kept a poem that became the 'key-note of my every aim and ambition" throughout life and she says that it best describes her journey
Then whisper, blossom, in thy sleep
How I may upward climb
The Alpine path, so hard, so steep,
That leads to heights sublime;
How I may reach that far-off goal
Of true an honoured fame,
And write upon its shining scroll
A woman's humble name

Her struggle to get her book published and be acknowledged as a writer was a hard and steep climb and as she writes "It was not an easy ascent, but even in the struggle at its hardest there was a delight and a zest known only to those who aspire to the heights"

This account means so much to me. L.M. Montgomery is my great great aunt from my father's side and so I have always felt somewhat of a special kinship with her. But I have never related to her nor admired her as much as after reading her account. I can most definitely relate to her rejection- and it is only now, weeks after occurring, that I am able to talk about it.

I have been working on a particular research paper for over 2 years, both conducting the research, writing, revising, and writing again. It actually won an national award at a sociology graduate student paper competition earlier this year, so after having received the go-ahead of my adviser, I submitted it to a peer-reviewed journal, only to have it full on REJECTED. No "revise and re-submit", indicating it has publishable potential for the journal but a flat out rejection. And both reviewers said that the paper had "rich sociological potential" but didn't live up to it. I have had my writing critiqued for years and it has been hard, but nothing prepares you when you receive your first rejection from a peer-review journal. I was heartbroken and literally sobbed myself to sleep. I sent my trusted adviser my comments and he actually said that they were "fairly positive". I was quite shocked, for I felt they had been quite harsh, especially the first nit-picky reviewer who went through the paper line by line and pointed out "errors". This sweet mentor was able to later talk through the comments with me, and try to set me off in the right direction. Having had a little distance from the event, I re-examined the paper and the comments and have agreed with some of them, particularly by the 2nd reviewer. However, I have yet again hit a road-block for which I will need to discuss with my adviser. It was so comforting to know that this writer, whom I completely and utterly respect, had her seminal work initially thrown aside, criticized from so many. She could have given up and said that it was worthless, but instead, after some needed time, she kept going an eventually had her dream accomplished.

While this story has particular application to writers, I truly feel that it applies to nearly everyone since rejection is something so common in our lives. While it may be disappointed, alright devastating, at times, it provides us with a turning point. Are we going to give up, just because it is hard? Or are we going to continue to climb and "never give up"? This is only one story of enduring to the end, and I know that there are thousands of others out there, of individuals living every day lives, who are making successful "careers" for themselves in whatever their chosen field- writing, motherhood, friendship, managing, construction etc. While we may not know the same level of success of L.M. Montgomery, we too can feel that inner satisfaction of achieving our dreams by never giving up and continuing on, despite the hard, steep Alpine path.