A friend who sells medical supplies takes a pragmatic approach to rejection. When a company says no to what she’s selling, she brushes it off and moves onto the next prospect. “In my personal life I can’t handle that kind of rejection, but at work it doesn’t bother me,” she says. “It’s just business.”
Writers deal with rejection all the time. But when a magazine editor says no to a query or kills a story, how many of us brush it off as easily as my saleswoman friend?
Rejection has been the topic du jour since Dan Baum wrote about his 2007 firing from The New Yorker in 140 character installments on Twitter a few days ago and then reassembled it as a whole piece on his website.
Not only was Baum fired by New Yorker editor David Remnick, he had five stories killed in the three-plus years he was a staff writer. Given the standing of The New Yorker in the American publishing industry, that’s rejection on an epic scale.
After reading Baum’s explanations of why he was fired and why the stories were killed, the whole episode seems less an edict on Baum’s abilities and more a confluence of unfortunate events and personality mismatch with a little bad decision making thrown in for good measure.
For example, in 2004, Baum wrote a story about how Florida was preparing for the presidential election that was killed over concerns about reporter bias after he mentioned to an editor he’d spent an afternoon distributing Kerry literature. A 2004 story about geneticists was killed after editors decided it was too similar to one by Malcolm Gladwell that had appeared in the magazine eight years earlier. A story on U.S. Special Forces troops training the Philippine army to fight terrorists never ran, according to Baum, because editors let it sit for months then killed it after a competitor ran a piece on a similar topic.
Baum wants it to be known that his explanations, which are posted on his website along with the complete manuscripts of all the killed stories, are only his own, how the killing of these stories looked to him at the time. He allows that he could be all wrong, that the stories were killed because they simply were no good.
What Baum’s explanations show me is that sometimes, it’s not you, it’s them. As a writer you can hit all the marks – write the perfect query or turn in exactly what you were assigned, – and still be rejected because circumstances have changed, the editors changed their minds, or when all is said and done, they’re just not that into you. Another great example of this is William Georgiades’ 2004 Mediabistro piece on his dealing with a Conde Nast editor over an ill-fated travel piece.
The moral of the story: Even though writing is a creative process, it’s still a business. The sooner freelancers come to terms with that, the easier it is to put rejection in its place, and like my saleswoman friend, move onto the next prospect.
According to Baum, he decided to come clean about his New Yorker experience after being asked about it at readings for Nine Lives, his book about post-Katrina New Orleans that debuted in February. You can read more about Baum, the book and his New Yorker days in a recent interview with the Colorado Springs Independent.
You can read more of what people are saying about how Baum used Twitter to tell his New Yorker saga in Gawker’s take on the story.
Not all rejections are bad. In fact, some are worth celebrating, according to Tim Beyers, a Denver freelance writer for Motley Fool and host of the weekly #editorchat session on Twitter, in a post called A word about rejection: dude. Beyers writes: “One I received last month from a national publication included this note from the editor: ‘You’re a good writer, and I wish you all the best.’ I think she means it. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself these days.”
To deconstruct other reasons magazines turn down writers’ queries, read Susan Johnston’s blog post on The Urban Muse, called 15 reasons your idea got rejected.
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Ha! That’s funny. A lot of members on Vois.com ask me “What happened to the projects that they bid on?” I just have to tell them, The probably changed their minds and decided to take it down.
Rejection definitely stinks, but I was surprised when I started freelancing to find that rejections don’t bother me that much. Considering how much they do bother me in my personal life, it was quite a revelation to me.
The reason? If I’m getting rejections, in turn I’m reminded that I’m also getting my work out there and giving myself more chances for it to be accepted. It’s like receiving a receipt for the hard hours I’ve put in. It’s proof that I’m active and vital.
Great post!
http://ParentingByTrialandError.com
I’ve had some published and some rejected. With rejections I try to learn from each one, and understand why it was rejected. Often it was because I had directed the piece to the wrong audience.
I write physican bluegrass fiction. It is a narrow genre, so not everyone wants to read my work. That does not concern me. I am more interested in the tens of thousands who read my blog than the millions who don’t.
However, I do not make my living as a writer, so it is easy to be philosophical about it all.
drtombibey.wordpress.com
That is correct. I am working on a novel, ‘The Mandolin Case’ due out in 2010. In the story, the medical truths are found via music and the arts more than by science.
I don’t expect it will wind up on the New York best seller list, but I think it will do O.K. with my people.
Dr. B
I just finished reading Mr. Baum’s account of his job at the New Yorker, which led me here.
I’ve been fired from nearly every job I ever had by failing to try to understand the office culture. It has been a chronic and predictable mistake that is obviously part of my screwed-up psyche.
Once in a while, I think about writing about my experience as an assistant (ghost writer) for Dear Abby. But the confidentiality clause is a worry.
Do you think the New Yorker had such a clause for its staff?
[...] WordCount’s Sometimes They’re Just Not That Into You [...]
[...] this year, Colorado writer Dan Baum used Twitter to write about his love-hate relationship with The New Yorker and Editor David Remnick, though in all honesty, that seemed to be more of a [...]
That’s a good, and probably healthy – way to look at rejection – as part of the work we do. You could also argue that if you’re not getting rejected you’re not testing the limits of the work you’re doing. If you constantly push past what you’ve done in the past to pursue different publications or genres you could eventually transform your entire writing business.
It must be easier to be philosophical when your career’s not on the line, thanks for the perspective. And I have to ask: what’s physician bluegrass fiction – books about doctors who play bluegrass music?
Thanks for the explanation, sounds interesting.
I have no idea about a The New Yorker confidentiality clause, but apparently Dam Baum felt comfortable enough about the details of his situation to share with the universe. I can only speak for myself, I would love to hear what it was like to work for Dear Abby – if you ever decide to spill the beans, send me the link and I’ll post it here.
Michelle R.