Rejection.

Yes, this is yet another writer writing about rejection. Boo hoo and all that. I don’t ask you to read this; you may if you wish but you can also choose not to.

As writers, we so often talk of rejection as our slighly masochistic bread and butter – it makes us better, stronger, blah, blah, blah. We expect it. And if I had been wise enough to expect the rejection that faced me today then perhaps I would not be feeling so angry about it now. Angry at myself, angry at my expectations, angry at the flood of pitying looks or remarks that my positive-bordering-on-flippant attitude, with which I’ve face this dilema when asked about it, is so ‘brave’ and ‘admirable’. When did getting on with the job and not dwelling on what cannot be changed become brave and admirable? Surely that is just what must be done.

I’ve never liked to dwell on the negatives though I’ll be the first to admit that this post is somewhat self-indulgent. So what? But back to rejection: it hurts. Sometimes a lot. Right now, it feels a bit like grief, like the glimmer of hope I’ve been carrying around with me for the last few months has died, brutally. So let this be the end of it; I pick myself up and I move on.