Reject - Rejection

When I write something on this blog, usually I write it for myself. Meaning It's a subject that I'am interested in enough to do some research into or have some personnel experience with. I believe if you ain't got a dog in the hunt why go there at all.

By blogging about it, putting it out there for the rest of the world to see forces me to galvanize my thoughts, forming an opinion, and putting it in print helps me understand it better. Hopefully you are helped as well.

Rejection is something we all deal with or in my case don't deal with very well. It's not that I've had so much, it's that I deal with it so badly. I recently ran across two examples of how other people have dealt with rejection in their work. I hope you find it helpful.

George Bernard Shaw the Irish playwright. Made a habit of writing 5 pages per day, for 9 yrs. he wrote making 30 dollars in that time, about a penny a day, and yes he did have a day job as a bank teller.

"First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.
Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not.
Habit will help you finish and polish your stories.
Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice."
                Octavia Butler

Since then he has received both an Academy Award for a screenplay, and a Noble Prize for literature. Today he is considered second only to Shakespeare as a British dramatist. He is said to have wrote a quarter of a million letters in his life. Most of this takes place in the early 1900's.

On a more modern note a book that most of us have heard of " Chicken Soup for the Soul" was rejected by publishers 144 times. Author Jack Canfield says"Where would I be today If I would have given up after 100 rejections".

That one book spinning off a series of 250 titles, and more than 500 million books sold. Who said persistence doesn't pay off. His books consist of collections of inspirational stories about the true lives of ordinary people. His story belongs right with them.

"When your efforts run in the face of
conventional wisdom and accepted mastery,
persistence can look like madness. If you
succeed in the end, this extreme originality
reformulates into a new level of mastery,
sometimes even genius; if you fail in the 
end, you remain a madman in the eyes of
others, and maybe even yourself. When you
are in the midst of the journey... there's
really no way of knowing which one you
are."    Hillary Austen

Seth Godin gives the best advice to writers, and the advice I like to follow. Which is if you write poorly, then continue to write poorly, and after a while you will write less poorly. He says writing is a skill to be learned.

He should know after writing more than 20 books, and 7000 blog post. Writing one a day on average. These are just a few examples of how persistence pays, and the struggle that a few people have gone through.

Your results may vary (mine do).

This is Papa Randy and I'am

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