Rejection hurts. Here’s why you need to seek more of it.

Rejection is painful.

Let’s be honest about this. It hurts. No one wants to hear that their ideas aren’t good enough. That their work didn’t make the grade.

It’s a horrible feeling when the audience at the open mic don’t like your music, your poetry, your jokes. Or when a gallery or shop doesn’t want to sell the art or products you make.

Our brain is wired to protect us from pain, to avoid danger. So of course we avoid situations where we might be rejected.

So why aim to collect rejections?

Because that’s how we grow. How we earn. How we get more work, new clients, new outlets for our work. You have to ask. And when you ask, you need to be OK with getting no for an answer.

Which is why it’s important to wear your rejections as a badge of pride. It’s proof that you’re doing the work, that you’re willing to take a risk and advocate for your services, your art, your products – or whatever else you create.

This month, I set out to get at least 20 rejections.

I have a book out in August, so I’m pushing for coverage, to guest on podcasts, for any opportunity to talk about the ideas behind Creative Play.

So far, I’ve only had a couple of rejections. This is disappointing, as I’ve sent out three proposals, every weekday. By now, I should be getting rejections every day.

Some of those pitches and proposals have definitely been dismissed, by people who won’t ever reply. Being ignored is worse than a no, so that definitely counts as a rejection. 

But I also know how busy people are, and how full their in-boxes get, so I leave it two weeks before I add it to my tally. I should get past 20 rejections fairly effortlessly by the end of the month, if I keep sending out ideas.

It’s a numbers game.

The more ideas you send out, the more times you aim to hear no, the greater your chances of getting a yes.

Which is why I count the rejections, as well as celebrating success. If I send out 20 proposals, and no one says yes to any of them, I’ve clearly got things to learn. But I still did the work, and put it out there. That’s a win.

Luck plays a part, too, of course. But the more you ask, the luckier you tend to get.

Make a game of it, if you can.

A few years ago, I joined a group of feature writers who each tried to collect 100 rejections before the end of the year. We all got 30-40 pitches turned down fairly quickly, and had fun sharing our rising totals with each other.

Some writers approached huge publications they wouldn’t normally have tried. Gleefully chasing rejections, they sent ideas to editors at magazines and newspapers that felt way out of their league: The Washington Post and the New York Times, The New Yorker and National Geographic.

But the rejection rate quickly slowed.

We didn’t have time to send out pitches at the same speed, because we were too busy. Doing work for the people who did say yes.

Including, inevitably, some of those big names. Whose editors, it turned out, were just as interested in good ideas as any other publication.

The fact is, if you set out to collect more rejections, you are pretty likely to get more work, if you’re selling ideas or services. Or more outlets stocking your work, if you’re selling physical products.

But there are other benefits, too.

Ideas are like rabbits.

Look after them, and they grow in number. Surprisingly quickly. Inspiration will come from everywhere, if you let it. Forcing yourself to generate ideas and send out proposals regularly is a sure way to stimulate that. 

Wait for the perfect idea, that flash of genius, and you might wait forever. Make yourself generate 10 pitches in a day or a week, and you’ll train your brain to make new connections, search out new ideas. 

Make yourself go to an open mic every week, and you’ll have to create new material to perform.

Make yourself approach three galleries or shops a week, asking them to sell your art or products, and you’ll start spotting potential outlets everywhere.

You’ll get some terrible ideas.

But you’ll also start to get some pretty great ones. You’ll write some desperate new songs, or jokes. But that’s how you’ll eventually happen upon something that really works.

Nothing is wasted. Once an idea is rejected in one place, tweak it if necessary, then send it on elsewhere. If it’s a good idea, it will find a home, eventually. 

If it’s a bad idea, you might still end up combining it with something else, further down the line, and suddenly making something brilliant.

A rejection might not mean your idea was a bad one.

It just wasn’t right for that particular person/publication/business, at that particular time. 

I once sent the same feature idea to 10 editors of arts sections and magazines on newspapers in the UK, and they all said no for various reasons, mostly to do with time and space. The story was long and had to be published fairly quickly. That’s a big ask for editors who often commission their content weeks in advance. 

But I really wanted to do the story, so I persisted. The next editor I tried had just lost a big feature and was looking for something to fill the gap. He didn’t just commission my idea – he put it on the cover. (It was about Damon Albarn’s trip to Mali to meet his musician friend Afel Boucum; click the link if you’d like to see it.)

Take pride in your failures.

Celebrate It means you’re trying, that you’re in the game. And rejection is part of the cost of playing.

JK Rowling’s synopsis for the Harry Potter series was famously turned down by 12 companies  – most of the big publishing houses in the UK ­ – before it was finally accepted by Bloomsbury. 

She pinned her first rejection letter to her kitchen wall, “because it gave me something in common with all my fave writers”. 

It’s what you do after rejection that matters.

In 2013, Rowling wrote The Cuckoo’s Calling, the first in her series of crime novels using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. That too was rejected by several publishers, and she later cheerfully shared those letters on social media, as an encouragement to other writers. (She obscured the signatures, explaining that she posted them as inspiration, not for revenge.)

Author Joanne Harris jumped in on the thread, saying she had so many rejections for her 1999 novel Chocolat, she “made a sculpture” out of them.

Rowling has sold some 400 million books. Chocolat also became a best-seller, and then a film starring Johnny Depp and Juliet Binoche. We wouldn’t have heard of either author if they’d taken their first rejections personally, and stopped trying. (And on that subject, here’s Quentin Tarantino talking to me about how he dealt with failure.)

Rejection makes you stronger.

You learn what works, and what doesn’t. You adjust your tone, your approach.

You learn how to contact influential gate-keepers in your field: editors, booking agents, managers, gallery owners.

You set up routines that support you during your increasingly regular auditions or interviews; or systems to process ideas and track your pitches.

You get out there and do more work, so you have something else to send out. 

Rejection by rejection, you’ll get better, stronger, more determined.

Your skin gets thicker, too.

The more rejections you get, the less it hurts. You’re not putting so much of yourself into each proposal. You’re not mind-reading, or spending too much time trying to understand why. You’re just sending your pitches and ideas out there, come what may. 

You start to learn that it’s not you that’s being rejected. It’s an idea, a proposal, an application, an email. And if that one didn’t work, then you have more you can try.

Remember: you can have pretty much anything you want in this world. You just have to be wiling to ask for what you want – and be willing to hear the word no a thousand or more times, before you get that precious yes. 

So: how many rejections are you aiming for, this month?