Dealing with rejection without letting it steer the book
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R. S. Breed Founder
Rejection comes in a lot of shapes. Form rejections from agents. Silence, which is its own kind of form rejection. A contest that doesn't place you. A one-star review. A beta reader who stopped at chapter three and went quiet. It all lands in about the same spot in the chest.
Some things that help, in no particular order.
A single rejection carries almost no information. A form "not for me" can mean the list is full, they just signed something similar, it's not their genre, or they read it at eleven at night and were tired. Don't try to reverse-engineer one.
Patterns are different. Twenty form rejections on the same query package might mean the pitch or the opening pages need work. Several beta readers stalling at the same scene means something is going on in that scene. Look for the repeat, not the one-off.
Wait a day before you act. Don't reply to the agent. Don't reply to the reviewer. Don't rewrite the whole opening at midnight. Be annoyed, sleep on it, then decide.
Then work out what kind of response it needs. Sometimes the right answer to rejection is to change the book. Sometimes it's to send it to the next name on the list unchanged. Telling those apart usually means having one or two readers whose judgement you trust more than your mood on a bad day.
And the book isn't you. Easy to say, hard to feel. A rejected manuscript is information about that book, in that market, at that moment, as seen by one person with a full inbox.
Some people also find it helps to set a rejection target for the year, on the theory that you only get to a big number by sending a lot of work out. It turns the thing you're dreading into the thing you're counting.
Does anyone have a rule for themselves about when to revise and when to keep submitting?