Rejecting Rejection with author Sarah Sullivan

“It’s been a while since I had the opportunity to introduce one of our Rejecting Rejection guest bloggers, but as the WB interns are dealing with finals, I have the good fortune of being the one to welcome author Sarah Sullivan to the series today. When Sarah’s piece came in, I read it right then. Sarah’s work never ceases to amaze me. She is a careful craftswoman and, as a friend, I know she is not one of the “it comes easy to me” proponents of writing. Sarah works tirelessly and tenaciously. She is as fierce as any lion, though her roar is much softer. She saves that true roar, that big, bold, earth-shaking one, for what she lays down on the page. And this essay is no different. Sarah has given us her all, and for that–and so much more–I say thank you. And welcome.”  – Bethany Hegedus

 

Rejecting Rejection: Finding the Cure

by Sarah Sullivan 

Sometimes I feel like the queen of rejection, and while I should be a master at managing rejection by this time, I still struggle with it. After I sold my first novel, I quickly launched into another one, desperate to have the complete draft of a new book before the first one was reviewed. What if reviewers hated my first novel? Would I be able to withstand the criticism and keep moving forward? Or would I be paralyzed by fear of failure?

I have saved the worst rejection letter I ever received to remind myself of all I would have missed if I had allowed rejection to make me stop writing. The editorial assistant at this particular publishing house had clipped an inner office routing slip to the top of  my manuscript and scribbled across the top, “This was in slush.  Feel free to toss it if you like.” The underlying message to me was, this manuscript is so bad, it doesn’t even merit our pre-printed rejection form.  But I survived.  I kept on writing.  I may have grown a slightly thicker hide. But I think the main reason I kept writing was that I figured out I was going to write regardless of whether anyone ever published my work. I was doing this for me, and no one could take that away.

Besides being the queen of rejection, I’m also the empress of self-doubt. Self-doubt is the writer’s worst inner demon. It’s the worm that eats away at your freedom to create. You need to squash it.  Step on that nasty little insect and grind it into mush under your heel!

Recently, I heard a story on WNYC’s Radiolab that set me thinking about self-doubt and coping with rejection. The story concerns Dr. Albert Mason, who, as a young physician in 1951, was called upon to treat a teenage boy whose body was mostly covered with a layer of black horny skin. The boy had undergone skin grafts, after which the plastic surgeons had thrown up their hands, saying they could do no more to help him. Dr. Mason had acquired a reputation for successfully treating patients by using hypnosis and the power of suggestion. He had delivered babies for women not under anesthesia, but simply by using hypnotic suggestion. He had cured warts using the same techniques.

Buoyed by his success with other patients, Dr. Mason decided to try hypnosis on the boy. He would begin with the boy’s left arm. He would put the boy under hypnosis, make the suggestion that the skin condition would clear up over a certain period of time, and then the boy’s left arm would be healed.

And it worked. The result was miraculous. No one could believe it. The boy’s left arm looked completely normal. So Dr. Mason decided to try hypnosis on another part of the boy’s body.

But something happened. Between the first time Dr. Mason treated the boy and the next time he tried hypnosis, a more senior physician informed Dr. Mason that he knew what was wrong with the boy’s skin. The boy was suffering from an incurable condition called congenital ichthyosiform erythrodermia. This was a tragic and rare condition which had never in the history of medicine been cured. It was hopeless.

The next time Dr. Mason tried hypnosis on the boy, the skin condition did not improve. His skin remained a black horny hide. There was no improvement. What happened? What went wrong?

Dr. Mason came to the conclusion that hypnosis was “a folie à deux,” meaning that it only worked when both parties to the procedure believed in it. In other words, the mere fact that a senior physician had planted in Dr. Mason’s mind the idea that the boy’s condition was incurable had somehow subtly affected the way Dr. Mason approached his patient. There must have been some shift in his air of confidence or his manner of authority in treating the boy. On some level, even if only subconsciously, Dr. Mason no longer fully believed that hypnosis would cure the disease, and that element of doubt sabotaged the procedure. (Read more about this story and listen to the podcast here.)

After hearing this broadcast, I started thinking about how much self-doubt inhibits my ability to tell stories.  How many hours do I spend overriding that nasty little inner voice that tells me I am bound to fail? How much more could I accomplish if I could silence that voice? Imagine what we as writers could accomplish if we abolished self-doubt and believed in ourselves the way young Dr. Mason believed in his ability to cure congenital ichthyosiform erythrodermia.

Storytelling is, in many ways, a “folie a deux.” You ask your readers to suspend disbelief. You ask them to put themselves in your able hands and trust that you are the expert. You are taking them on a journey and they need not worry whether there will be disappointment. Your story is  a good one. It will leave them satisfied. They will be glad they came along for the trip.

I started writing as a freelancer. I was a single parent with a full-time job, a passion for children’s books, and a burning desire to tell stories. There were no SCBWI groups within 100 miles of my home,  but there was a children’s literature conference at Ohio State University every February. I heard Katherine Paterson, Lois Lowry, Patricia Lee Gauch, Susan Hirschman, and Margaret Mahy speak about writing in general and writing for young people in particular. It was a wonderful education. I wrote book reviews and feature articles about children’s books for my hometown newspaper. I started writing stories and poems and sending them out. I collected rejection slips. Boxes of them. Finally, the poetry editor of Yankee magazine expressed interest in a poem. Not long after that, I sold a poem to a children’s magazine. I wrote a novel that Scholastic passed around for second and third reads. Then I wrote a second novel. I found out about the Marguerite de Angeli contest sponsored by Bantam Doubleday Dell only days before the deadline, so I called to ask if I could submit. A man’s voice came on the phone.

“Do you even have a manuscript?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, in a shaky voice.

“How many words?”

“A little over 29,000.”

He made a considering sound. “That’s within the range,” he said.  “Sure. Go ahead and send it.”

So I did. And, some time later, I received word that I was one of three finalists in the contest. (There was no winner that year.)  I counted this as evidence that I was getting better. It was substantial progress from the days of “feel free to pitch it if you want.” I would keep trying.

It would be four picture books later and more years than I’m willing to admit before my first middle grade novel was published. But it was published. And VOYA called it “an outstanding debut novel.” And it received a starred review from The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. 

But none of this would have happened if I had not looked rejection dead in the eye and said I don’t care about you.  Even if that feeling only lasts during the minutes in the day when I’m writing. Even if rejection still burns and sizzles my soul at other times. When I’m writing, I put rejection away. I silence it.

Reject away, I think. Only not yet. For today, for now, for this moment, this work is for me.

 

 

Sarah Sullivan lives and writes from her home near Williamsburg, Virginia.  She is the author of All That’s Missing, which received a starred review from The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. She has also written four picture books, including Passing The Music Down, an NCTE Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts and a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book, and Once Upon a Baby Brother, a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book. She has an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College where she won the Harcourt Post-Graduate Scholarship. Find out more about her at www.sarahsullivanbooks.com