by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: May 12, 2009

It is not an easy thing for a writer to do, trying to use a rejection slip to improve their writing, or indeed in any positive sense. The receipt of a rejection slip can be a crushing blow to a writer and a time when many writers will turn away from the process of writing for a time, or even altogether.

If the writer is serious about achieving success in the writing business, however, they have to view rejection slips for precisely what they are. A rejection slip is essentially notification from one particular editor that he or she alone does not believe that a particular piece of work the writer has produced is suitable at that particular time for their specific publication. If we take the time to read the preceding sentence again, several times, we will find something strange within its meaning. We will hopefully thereafter see how small and insignificant each rejection slip is in relation to the bigger picture. A rejection slip refers to one specific piece of work, one specific editor, one specific publication or publishing house and possibly even a very specific point in time. How many of each are there in the bigger writing world?

We have therefore identified why rejection slips should never be viewed as the be all and end all and why we should not allow them to put us off the writing process altogether. This established, we can now move on to consider what we can take out of rejection slips and how we can use them to improve our writing.

The first step to using rejection slips in any positive sense is to revisit our material, try to put ourselves in the editor's shoes and consider possibilities why they found that they had to reject the work. It may not be easy, but we absolutely have to be objective here. We have to look at the quality of our work and also the suitability of it for the publication to which we submitted it.

As we consider our work in tandem with its suitability for the publication, the latter process may assist us in identifying shortfalls within the former. We may find that our work is not specific enough. We may find that we do not explain ourselves clearly enough in what may perhaps have been written as an instructional article. We may simply find that our piece does not quite flow as it should in comparison to other articles which have been published in the relevant journal or magazine. There are a great many possible shortcomings we can identify in our work in this fashion, none of which need preclude our future success as a writer.

When we have identified any and all such factors within our writing, it is time to revise or even rewrite the piece, taking careful account of what we have uncovered. In this way, we will have moved on from the disappointment of receiving the rejection slip and essentially used it to improve our writing and our future chances of having our work published.

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