by Leah Duarte
I’ve been submitting my work again. After two years where my focus was on writing, then editing, my own manuscript as well as the WiT Forest Floor anthology, I was accepted into a poetry mentorship opportunity. With some coaxing, I acknowledged it was time to put myself out there again. I had the work written and polished, and now it was time to show it off.
The first rejection of my manuscript hurt in a way I didn’t know it could. Individual rejections stung, I remembered that much, but there was something so keen about the rejection of the entire collection, of all the work and pride and hope it represented, that it left me breathless. That was the first moment I had to ask myself the question I’d told myself I never would: do I want to try again? Do I want to feel this again? Because I will feel it again, if I keep trying.
There have been quite a few rejections since, both of my manuscript and of individual poems. So far, I’m still trying.
I’ve felt a lot of pressure to immediately develop a thick skin for rejection. It’s part of the process, it’s happened to every author, it’s inevitable, and all we can control is how we respond to it. While all of this is true, I’ve found that trying to rush the process, to immediately be “okay” following a rejection, actually impedes my ability to process and move past it. I’ve always been a sensitive person, and that’s a fundamental truth about myself. I can’t force my way through to fit what I think of as the mature, rational response. Rejection is painful. Rejection is personally, emotionally, and psychologically painful. Not knowing what the path forward is, or if a path even exists at all, is frightening on an existential level.
Part of the difficulty is in the back and forth. An acceptance here, a grant there, a nomination over here and some positive feedback from a writer I admire over there, and then rejection, and rejection, and rejection. While talking to friends and family throughout the process, I find myself returning to the same thought: if this isn’t for me, I just need to know. If I knew, I could make peace with it. I just need to know if this isn’t my path so I can find where my path is.
I’m blessed to have a lot of good people within and out the industry who reassure me that “it will happen,” in the overarching sense of success, whatever that might mean: a published manuscript, a career, a single acceptance in my inbox. I’m so grateful to every single one of those persistent and wonderful cheerleaders, but I also think it’s important that we as aspiring writers, writers with only a few publications under our belts, and/or writers waiting for that first manuscript to be accepted to also make peace with the alternative, even if it can sometimes feel unspeakable. Whether or not that alternative is true matters less to me than the emotional and mental resilience that comes with the acceptance of it as a possibility.
Let me be clear: I will always be a writer, even if I’m my only audience. I told stories before I learned to write, emulating my favourite storybooks. It’s who I am. While talking to our mentor and leader Ann Y.K. Choi about rejection, she told me that we as writers will continue writing because we have no other choice but to write, and that has always been my truth. My happiest and most devastated moments are all recorded in my poetry. Nothing and no one can change that unless I allow that change to occur.
That said, I also think it’s crucial to speak that unspeakable thing: what if it doesn’t happen? What happens then? What happens to me? Who am I if my work isn’t out there, if I’m not a poet in the way I want to be a poet? What if I don’t have what it takes to endure until it’s my time, if it’s ever my time?
Knee-jerk response: all manner of disaster, pick one at random and yes, that one, and that other one, too.
Rational response: it hasn’t happened yet, so if it never did, things would be as they are now. I would still be in WiT, hopefully managing a new anthology. I would still thrift shop with my friends, and collect charms for my purse, and consider new DIY projects to decorate my bedroom. I would still attend poetry readings at Sauga Poetry to catch up with the connections I’ve made through my words, and the snaps and stomps and hums of appreciation would still mean the world to me, even if my work went no further than that tiny coffee shop at golden hour. I don’t know if I would always feel like something was missing, or if that’s just what the person I am right now believes, but there would be a life for me in that future nevertheless, if not the one I want and have wanted so badly since I was old enough to understand they could pay you to write.
I’d like to leave you with some practical advice, if you’re also a writer going through the submissions process, for the first or the thousandth time, from someone who hasn’t made it yet either and is just trying to keep her head above water like you.
First, make a spreadsheet. We will all eventually fall to the spreadsheet, just embrace it now and save yourself from the endless panicked digging through files that I subjected myself to for years. I would suggest including publication names, opening and closing dates, themes of calls if applicable, links to submission guidelines, and a list of what pieces you’re submitting and what pieces you’ve submitted in the past, if applicable. Check them off as you submit. Mark your rejections in whatever way feels cathartic.
Second, celebrate your rejections with loved ones or alone. Buy yourself an ice cream, go out to dinner, go sit in a park and talk or think about anything in the world that isn’t writing or the literary scene. If you’re anything like me, the certainty that rejection deserves punishment runs deep, and we need to shift that if we have any hope of lasting through this process long enough to see our work published. Rewire those connections. A rejection email is never going to feel good, but after you’ve finished feeling however you need to feel, at least there’s ice cream, and hopefully the absence of the certainty you’ve done something wrong. After ten rejections, after twenty, do something really fun. Go to an amusement park, plan an outing, do something you never let yourself do. Write about it after, or don’t.
Third, cry if you need to cry. Be angry if you need to be angry. In the privacy of your room, or amongst people you love and trust, you don’t need to be professional, you don’t need to take it with grace. Send your polite “Thank you for your consideration” email if applicable, delete the rejection quietly if not, and then walk away from your phone or computer. You are first and foremost a human being, most likely as hopeful and sensitive as most human beings who create are, and this hurts. Maybe one day it won’t, or not as badly, but today it does, and denying it is only going to eat away at you. You might find the feeling leaves more easily and quickly once it’s allowed to exist without resistance.
Fourth, if all else fails, give them paperwork. A poet gave me this advice once, and more than anything else, this has been what keeps me submitting when I feel like I can’t. If you’re disillusioned, if you’re not sure if you should submit for any number of reasons, do it anyway. Maybe you’ll be rejected immediately or in 6-8 months, but someone, somewhere, had to sit down and face your work in order to make that decision, no matter what they thought of it. If nothing else, you made them see you for a few minutes. Maybe it will mean something or nothing, but at least they had to read it, and sometimes, being seen is victory enough.
Last, remember you’re so much more than this very niche, often isolating, always strange experience of pursuing publication. Whether or not you’re able to share your work widely, your work matters and you matter. I won’t tell you that it will happen, because I don’t know if it will. I’m sorry that it’s hard right now, that it has been so hard and will probably continue to be. You can walk away whenever you want, and you can come back whenever you want: in a year, in ten, in twenty, never.
As for me, I have a query letter to draft after this, and some desserts I owe myself. Good luck to all of us.
Leah Duarte is a Portuguese-Canadian poet and fiction writer. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s MA in English program, where her focus on diasporic narratives and women in speculative fiction shaped her poetic focus on diasporic distance and the violence of female identity. Her recent work has appeared in The /tƐmz/ Review, untethered magazine, and The Four Faced Liar, among others. Her poetry has received a 2023 Best of the Net nomination, and her flash fiction piece “Passengers” won the 2022 gritLIT Youth Flash Fiction contest. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection intertwining Portuguese folklore, religious themes, representations of mental illness, and depictions of girlhood through a speculative lens, funded by the Ontario Arts Council and the Mississauga Arts Council.
The views and opinions expressed in blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of all WiT members.
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