Rejecting Rejection with author Cordelia Jensen

Finding the Joy in Rejection  

by Cordelia Jensen

My first semester at Vermont College of Fine Arts I worked on a middle grade camp book called What’s the Deal with Tyler Tides? I had written a complete draft of the book before starting school and was excited to show it to my advisor. I waited. My workshop group has liked it overall; wouldn’t she?

Unfortunately, she thought it lacked voice and that the dialogue sounded cliché. I was hurt. But I revised. I was at school to learn. 

I handed it back in. She still thought it was a generic story. I tried again and again. I wrote a new story called The Kat 9, and I wrote two other versions of Tyler Tides with different characters narrating. None of them worked. None of them had what she called “voice.”

My advisor was worried about me. She talked to the faculty chair about my lack of progress. She told me my critical work was stronger than my creative. She had me write a critical essay of my own writing. 

I felt sad.

Confused.

Rejected.

Hadn’t I been accepted to this highly-regarded grad program because I was a good writer?

Hadn’t people told me before that I could write?

More than that, I knew I loved to write. That I felt depressed if I didn’t write. That getting lost in a story was one of my favorite things to do, that I wasn’t me if I wasn’t writing. 

I thought back to my writing past. Before I had ever tried to write for children, I had written poetry. Lots of it. 

I graduated from Kenyon College many years ago with a degree in creative writing. My senior thesis was poetry. I had even won Poet Laureate of Perry County, Pennsylvania, for two years. 

And yet, my poetry had been rejected too, being called “too narrative” or “too literal.” 

But I sent it to my advisor anyway. 

My advisor pulled a 180 on me. She said, “Cordelia, this is it. This is your voice. You are a poet.” 

And then she told me about something called a verse novel. I had no idea how popular verse novels were in young adult literature. I devoured them; understanding, finally, that this is the way I could tell the story I needed to tell. My own. 

I started a verse memoir with my advisor that I then turned into a verse novel which I worked on for the rest of my time at school. That novel, Skyscraping, became my critical thesis, and earned me an agent soon after graduating in 2012. Once I had an agent for this verse novel, though, I contended again with rejection. 

The first time my agent ever used the word “pass” when referring to my manuscript, I thought that was a B.S. way of saying rejected. Rejection is a loaded word. A terrible one. A personal word, like not only is an editor not interested in your manuscript, she is also disinterested in you as a person. She is not just saying, “this isn’t right for me,” it is a full-out “NO ARE YOU CRAZY FOR SHOWING THIS TO ME?” 

But a “pass?” “Pass” is the word you use in opposition to fail. I passed my class! Please pass the peas! What a pass! A pass is something positive. And maybe, even when an editor passes on a manuscript, it can be something positive and not this horrible, tortured thing.  As I received my second, third, fourth pass, I began to use the word myself. If for no other reason than that it felt better. And, really, more accurate. The passes I received on my manuscript are passes I have read again, sometimes even smiling. Because even though they didn’t love it–some of them liked it a whole lot. 

It is better to think about it all in terms of marriage. Now that I have an editor (an excellent one), I understand that she had to fall in love with my book in order to spend that much time with it. I mean, she had to have such a deep connection with the characters in order to really get them to effectively act within their story. To see them for who they are. I don’t think this is something an editor would do for a book they just like. So I think about it this way: many, many passes are made on books by editors who do, actually, LIKE a manuscript. Just like there are many people who might pass through your life that you like, even some you date, but would you marry all those people? Probably not. You have to choose someone you can live with in a daily way. Same with an editor and your manuscript. She has to come back to it, again and again, knowing she made the right decision for believing in your story. 

Once I had a book deal, I contended again with rejection. Though I thought of it, or tried to think of it, as something more positive. I revised Skyscraping many times before it went to copy edits. I had to keep reminding myself: my editor loves my book. I am a writer because I love to write, not because someone approves or disapproves of what I’m doing. 

I have since gone back to Tyler Tides, actually turning it into a YA verse novel using a different main character, giving it a different title. A lot of the plot of the book has changed, but some of what happens is the same. And all the characters are essentially the same. I do not regret writing that manuscript years ago. And I do not regret switching gears while I was at VCFA; I did find my voice or, at least, brought it back. I also do not regret reading my “passes” because some of them helped me when I was revising. I listened to them and thought about them as I revised. I accepted parts of them.  

I don’t reject rejection; I choose to accept it. But by accepting it, it doesn’t mean I will let it destroy me or destroy what I love to do. It means I will not make it mean something bigger than it does. I will listen, I will write and rewrite, take what I like and what I don’t. If I hadn’t switched gears at VCFA, Skyscraping wouldn’t exist. Maybe I wouldn’t have even gotten through the program. If I hadn’t been “passed” by some of the other editors, maybe we would’ve never found the right one for the book. If I didn’t listen to my editor’s words, maybe my book wouldn’t be coming out in June. And although all of those things at times felt like rejection, that is only because I was choosing to see it that way. Today, I make a different choice. I see it all as actually something more like accepting others’ influence on your writing choices. Respecting them, trusting them, and all the while, understanding that no one can take away the joy I feel when I’m writing.

In fact, maybe that’s it. 

Maybe the opposite of rejection isn’t a pass; it isn’t acceptance. 

Maybe it’s joy. 

And so here’s the challenge to all of us who choose to write: can you find the joy in rejection? Can you revise rejection and turn it into something sort of awesome?

I don’t know if I can, but I’m trying. 

Because I know even when my book comes out, it will be rejected again. Someone won’t like it. Maybe many someones.

But they can’t take my joy away. They can’t, and I know this is cliché, but it is also true: they can’t because I won’t let them. 

Cordelia Jensen was Poet Laureate of Perry County in 2006 & 2007.  She graduated with a MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2012. Cordelia’s YA Novel in Verse, Skyscraping, is forthcoming from Philomel/Penguin in June 2015. Cordelia teaches creative writing in Philadelphia, where she lives with her husband and children. Cordelia is represented by Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger, Inc. You can find her at www.cordeliajensen.com and on Twitter @cordeliajensen