How to Deal with Rejection and Setback?

Yesterday, I was rejected by a prospective freelance client.

Today, one of the platforms I use to promote my books – and interact with readers – changed its policies. This will force me to drastically change my book marketing plans for the year, and I’m still not sure how it will all work out.

Did it hurt?

Well, my first instinct is to say – Nope. I don’t care about a rejection. In my 5+ years of freelancing (and working full-time), I’ve faced hundreds of them. What’s one more to the pile?

The truth?

I had a nightmare this afternoon. The first one I’ve had in months.

I won’t bore you with the details. It was weird and incoherent, as dreams tend to be. You don’t want to go into the nitty-gritty of that. Trust me.

The point is, the rejection clearly had affected me, much as my ego would like you to believe otherwise.

Rejections usually do. But this wasn’t just any old rejection. This was different. Special.

Because I didn’t see it coming.

That’s not to say I can usually tell the future. But I’m naturally pessimistic. I never think things are going to work out until they actually do. I never assume I’ll get a job until the contract is signed and the first payment languishing safely in my bank account.

But this job was right up my alley. I had worked with similar clients before and received positive feedback from them all. The trial assignment was simple and straightforward. In my opinion, it had gone well.

For once, I was almost sure I had this one in the bag.

Well, the best-laid plans of mice, men, and freelancers…

That’s what I got for being overconfident. I was rejected – because my grammar wasn’t up to the mark. Salt to the wound? I’d say so.

And hardly had I gotten over that unpleasant surprise, when I was hit with a new one. Twice, in as many days.

I received a stern, slightly condescending – if politely worded – email from Goodreads. It warned me that I was engaging in ‘self-promotional activities’ on their site, which was now against their community guidelines.

For the uninitiated, Goodreads is the most popular social media site for book lovers. It allows users to rate, review, share, and catalogue the books they’ve read, while also keeping tabs on the books that their friends are reading. 

The self-promotional activities I was engaging in, for the record, involved requesting book reviews from readers.

Why that would be against the ‘community guidelines’ of a website solely dedicated to reading and reviewing books is anyone’s guess. But when on Goodreads, I guess we must do as the Goodreads gods command.

Which brings us to my current predicament. Down a client and a promotional platform, all within a span of 24 hours.

What Led Me Here?

Tired of hearing about my First World problems yet? Good. There’s more where that came from.

After all, it’s not every day you get to whine about your First World problems from a Third World country in the middle of a global pandemic. Imma milk this for all it’s worth.

Anyway, this year didn’t start out badly, professionally speaking. After working from home for more than six months, I quit my fulltime job in November of 2020. No sense in staying bound to one city when I was working entirely through the Internet. If I was going to spend all my time at home, one way or the other, why not explore greener pastures in other cities and countries?

It was perhaps the best decision of my life. Not only did it increase my income, fulltime freelancing also left me with enough free time to get caught up on my chores and write more fiction than I had in months.

Consequently, I completed the final draft of my fourth novel, A Call for Brighter Days, and hit publish. This is the second book in The Aeriel Chronicles, my campy urban fantasy series about a war between humans and angels.

I also made the first book, A Flight of Broken Wings, available for free on a bunch of online retailers and webnovel sites, including Amazon, B&N, and Wattpad. That’s a marketing technique I stole from more experienced authors, which has been paying rich dividends ever since.

As you can see, things were going pretty well. The early reviews coming in for Book 2 were better than I’d hoped for. Usually, I collect at least a couple of 1-star reviews almost a month after release day. This time, they were nowhere to be seen (although I’m sure I’m jinxing it just by typing this sentence).

Reviewers were happy. Clients were content. Life was good.

And that’s when I should’ve realized the other shoe was about to drop.

But then, hindsight’s always 20/20, isn’t it?

My biggest problem, 24 hours ago, was that the glowing reviews weren’t coming in fast enough (and that PayPal seemed to be raising its fee by the day).

A moment of silence for the lost innocence of that sweet summer child.

But I’m writing this post to remind myself that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Heck, this isn’t anywhere close to the biggest setback I’ve faced in recent years.

There are always more clients to be found (although it mightn’t feel like that when an unexpected rejection hits you in the face). And Goodreads might be an important platform, but it isn’t the only one.

In short, this too shall pass. I’ll find a way around it. I know, because I’ve done so many times in the past. But I wanted to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about rejections and setbacks. To reassure myself (and anyone else who might need it) that the dejection and self-doubt you’re feeling now are temporary. But your dreams and goals are not.

So take a break. Give yourself permission to wallow – in front of perfect strangers on the Internet, if you must. But don’t forget to pull yourself back up and take the next step forward.

What seems like an insurmountable hurdle now will look much less daunting after a good night’s sleep and a strong cup of coffee. Problems are permanent, but this one isn’t. Breathe. One day, today’s panic attack will be a funny story you tell your friends over dinner. Your job (and mine) is to make sure that day arrives as soon as possible.

How to Deal with Rejection?

It’s not really possible for me to answer this question objectively, at the moment. This blog post is very much a case of the blind leading the blind. So I apologize in advance for the absolute lack of any simple, step-by-step solutions to your problem.

What is the problem?

Well, it’s that rejection sucks. Hard. It plays havoc with your self-confidence and makes you want to quit. To crawl into a hole and never come out again. Or, at least, that’s what it does to me. I’m not projecting or anything.

But really, it’s the emotional fallout of rejection that’s the hardest to deal with. It’s not like losing one potential client will wreck me financially. Objectively, I know that. But, damn it, it was a good client. An interesting project. A project I’d hoped to be working on for the next few months. And that stings. Rejection always stings.

It also causes a lot of anxiety.

Am I really as good as I think I am? Have I been deluding myself all these years, telling myself I can write, when I clearly have no idea what I’m doing? Was all that positive feedback – every 5-star review – just people being polite? Taking pity, perhaps?

Will I ever really achieve the goals I’ve set for myself? Or were they just the delusional daydreams of a hapless, untalented hack?

Okay, I’m being melodramatic.

But, really, that’s my brain in a nutshell. Melodramatic.

Hindi soap opera writers have nothing on my brain. If a spoon falls off the counter, my brain immediately decides that it’s an earthquake and the ceiling’s about to cave in. If I get a single negative review…well, obviously, my writing career must be at an end.

Thankfully, these thoughts rarely last long. My brain is easily bribed with coke and nachos. A positive response from a client – or an enthusiastic email from a reader – also does the trick.

Nevertheless, these episodes of anxiety and self-doubt are distracting. I was supposed to be applying for freelance projects this evening. Instead, here I am, trying dubious self-therapy through this longwinded post.

Rejections – especially unexpected ones – will do that. Knock me off my stride for hours or days on end.

My brain keeps playing the rejection on loop – be it a bad review or some negative feedback – obliterating my ability to concentrate on anything else. At least for a little while.

Does that happen to you too? It sucks, doesn’t it?

But believe it or not, it does get better. It certainly did for me. If you think I’m a fragile snowflake now, you should have seen me five years ago. Or even three. That’s when I published A Flight of Broken Wings, Book 1 of The Aeriel Chronicles.

It wasn’t the first book I’d published, but it was the first one that I’d tried to market or promote in any way. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but my efforts did yield some sales and 100+ reviews on various platforms.

The first time I got a 1-star review, I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything for a whole day. I felt like I’d throw up if I tried, so I didn’t.

Bad reviews still faze me, but not for more than a couple of hours at a time. The last time I got one, the effects only lasted for the half hour it took the pizza delivery guy to reach my flat.

Yes, I bribe myself with food. And I’m only a little bit embarrassed about it.

I started looking for a fulltime job for the first time in 2017, after earning a post-graduate diploma in journalism. The prospect of talking on the phone with potential employers scared the shit out of me.

To the extent that I refused to apply for a job at any newspaper that required you to call them after you submitted the application. (Yeah, some of the older, more traditionalist newspapers in Kolkata still did that back in 2017. I’m looking at you, The Statesman.)

Now, I regularly give interviews and attend meetings on Skype, with clients from various parts of the country and the world. This would never be my preferred mode of communication. I will always prefer an email (or a DM) over a phone call. I didn’t become a writer for all the social interaction, after all.

But that instinctive fear of facing potential rejection head on is gone. My gut no longer clenches painfully at the thought of a difficult call with a client. Negative feedback no longer makes me want to crawl under the nearest rock and never come out.

And while that may just be ‘normal’ to most people – not much to write home about – I’ll take my wins where I can get them. To me, they’re precious. Achievements unlocked in the game of life after years upon years of dangerous missions and hard-fought battles.

Even if the only real danger was to my ego – my confidence and sense of self-worth.

Success Is the Slow Realization of a Worthy Ideal

I’m not sure where I first read it. But this quote’s stuck with me for the past year or so, because of how true it has been to my own experience.

When you first start doing something, it’s difficult. Painfully difficult. And despite all that difficulty, you’re not doing it very well. It’s easy to think that this is because you naturally suck at the thing.

And maybe you do. Ask somebody (or preferably, multiple people) who don’t give a shit about you, what they think of your skills. They wouldn’t have much reason to lie to you.

But even if you’re not an absolute hack, the first few times you do something, you probably will suck. Whether or not you realize it at the time. I can no longer read my earliest manuscripts without cringing constantly. Content writing is no different. There are sites on the Internet I avoid like the plague, for fear of coming across one of my old articles.

It’s a natural part of growth. But when you’re in the throes of sucking at something – of being rejected left, right, and center – it can be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. To even imagine that there is any light in the world. (See? My melodramatic brain is at it again!)

What I’m trying to say is that when you first start doing something – and doing it badly – progress can be slow. So slow, in fact, that you don’t even notice it. I never noticed my writing getting better from one day to the next. I didn’t notice myself becoming less anxious and nervous when dealing with clients.

The only reason I know that those things happened is that I have tangible proof.

I have articles and books that I wrote years ago, that I can compare to the ones I wrote more recently, in order to see the improvement.

I have screenshots of longwinded WhatsApp messages sent to friends – cribbing about how scared I was about this interview or that client call. Things I wouldn’t think twice about, today.

Through all that whining and panicking, I was making progress. It was just too slow for me to notice.

But the only reason I can talk about it today is that I stuck to it.

Despite knowing that I sucked. Despite facing rejection at every turn. Despite losing my appetite every time I received a negative review. And despite having no guarantee that things would ever get better. That I would ever get better.

Because there are no guarantees I can give you. Or myself.

You can make all the progress in the world, only for the market to shift right before you hit it big, so that you’re forced to learn a whole new way of doing things.

Or one of your articles/stories/songs/videos could go viral and change your life overnight.

There’s no way to predict the future. But I can tell you this. You’ll be better off for having tried. For having given it everything you had.

After all, twenty years from now, you’ll be twenty years older. Twenty years closer to death. You can’t change that.

But you can decide whether you will have spent those twenty years trying to make your dreams come true, or being so afraid of failure that you couldn’t even reach for success.

Because that’s the secret to success, insofar as there is a ‘secret’. Fail as many times – and as badly – as you can, without killing yourself.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Ten years down the line, you would still be failing. But when you look back, you’d be surprised at how far you’ve come. How easy it is to do the things that had once seemed impossible.

Ten years down the line, you will be failing spectacularly at things you never imagined you’d have a chance to do.

That’s the goal.

1-star reviews are terrible. Until I remember, there was a time (less than half a decade ago) when I never thought I’d get any reviews. When I would’ve given anything for someone – who wasn’t a friend or a relative – to read my stories and tell me what they thought. Even if they thought it was shit.

Yesterday, I was rejected – for the position of freelance script writer for a famous YouTube video essayist.

Two years ago, I would never have imagined that such a job was even a remote possibility for me.

Today, I have written scripts for two famous YouTube creators, one of whom was awesome enough to give me writing credits. Yesterday, I was rejected by the third such client, because my grammar wasn’t up to the mark.

You see? I just failed spectacularly at something I had never imagined I’d have a chance to do!

And really, that’s all there is to it. That’s the secret.

Just keep sucking at the thing until you suck at it a little less.

Keep getting rejected, until you’re getting rejected for projects you’d never have dared apply to, before.

You can never solve all problems and eliminate all setbacks. So why not aim for better problems? More interesting setbacks?

Being reprimanded by Goodreads – for asking readers to review my books – is super frustrating.

But it’s a better problem to have than the one I had five years ago – not having any books. Or three years ago – not having any readers.

I don’t know how I’ll get around this one, yet. But experience tells me that I will, eventually. The trick is to keep at it; keep trying different things until something clicks into place. It will happen, eventually. It always does.

And until that time comes, I’ll go drown my sorrows in coke and nachos.

See you around, the next time I have an existential crisis to work through.