On Writing After Rejection
on weathering rejection and how all I ever needed to know as a writer I learned from tubthumping by chumbawamba
It is 1999, and my sister and I are playing our favorite game. It’s the kind of irresponsible, ill-conceived game dads come up with that kids love and everyone just agrees not to tell Mom about.
In this game, Grace and I stand on my parents’ bed (a four-poster bed with iron bedposts btw). My dad takes all the pillows off the bed and piles them up at the foot of the four-poster, where he stands, waiting. Then he turns “Tubthumping” on the stereo. If you haven’t listened to this song, please pause now to watch the video at the end of this post. Grace and I begin jumping on the bed and wildly screaming whatever lyrics we can recognize. We are both under five shouting, “Pissing the night away! Whiskey drink! Vodka drink! Lager drink!” And this isn’t even the fun part.
Then the chorus hits: “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.” Over and over and over again. This is Dad’s cue. He begins hurling the pillows at us in attempt to knock us down. We go flying, falling off the bed, narrowly missing the iron bedposts, smacking into each other and sometimes the wall. But we fucking love it. We are screaming, “I get knocked down! But I get up again!,” breathless with our own invincibility. When the song is over, my dad plays it again. We get knocked down, on repeat. And we get up back up again.
Over twenty years later, sitting in a classroom during the first year of my MFA in Fiction Writing, one of my professors would repeat (slightly more eloquently) the lesson I had learned so long ago from Tubthumping. He told us that the single most important indicator of success as a writer is whether you can keep writing after rejection. Essentially, whether you can get back up again.
In fact, I have heard this from almost every creative writing instructor I’ve ever had, because it’s just that important to understand as an aspiring author. If you dream of being writer, you need to know there is perhaps no career that comes with more rejection than writing. Every year I have the displeasure of being rejected from fellowships, residencies, conferences, magazines, journals, and more. I have finished an entire novel and queried it only to have it rejected by every single agent. I had to take the novel that I poured my words, time, money, heart, hopes, and dreams into, pack it in a box, and slide that box under my bed. Then I had to start all over again. I had to stare at the blank page and begin a new novel, which I am currently working on. I have been rejected by the Tin House and Sewanee summer writing conferences for three years running, but I just applied again for this coming summer. I have applied for a flash writing fellowship with Smokelong for three years in a row and been rejected every single time. My Submittable is a veritable battle ground of fallen soldiers, stories that were rejected so many times I finally had to call it day and admit they would likely never be published.
But, there is some good news: if you can weather the rejection, if you can keep going, keep getting back up again, good things will happen. Last summer, while I was rejected from Tin House and Sewanee, I was accepted to the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, which was one of the best experiences of my life. Even as my novel was being roundly rejected by agents, I was accepted to several MFA programs. Last year I had stories published in Chestnut Review, Ghost Parachute, and Fractured. This spring, I have an entire suite of flash stories scheduled for publication in F(r)iction, which is sold in Barnes and Nobles across the country! And in a few weeks, one of my stories will be published in Cleaver. I never would have achieved any of these milestones if I had let the literal hundreds of rejections that preceded them convince me I shouldn’t be a writer.
The people who make it as writers are the ones who get back up again, who keep writing despite rejection. It’s just that simple.
So, to conclude this piece, and in the spirit of getting back up again in the face of rejection, I’m going to share a piece of mine that has been rejected countless times. But, just like me, the many rejections this piece has faced do not define it. I still think it’s a beautiful, unique story about sex, secrets, and sisterhood. I hope you enjoy it!
Stellaluna
I once saw my sister make love to the moon.
The groan of weathered wood woke me. I slipped from cotton summer sheets and stole after the creaking steps, the sleeping house shifting beneath two sets of feather-light feet. A shadow flicked round the door frame ahead of me, long-limbed and nimble—my sister. I wasn’t surprised. Stella loved the night. She preferred its cool, calm quiet, its solitude. She hated when I followed her. Tag-a-long, she called me, lilac eyes rolling.
The back porch sighed under her steps, too old and too tired to fret over midnight mischief. But I was only twelve. I could count all my secrets on one hand. I wanted to know where my sister was going. I was Peter Pan. She was a shadow. I would have stitched myself to her feet if she let me.
I followed her, down the gravel walk, through a spray of purple hyacinths, to a long, lonely stretch of shore. She knelt in the sand, oncoming waves winking silver in the moonlight as they crashed inches from her. Arms up, palms out, she threw her head back. The fragile skin of her neck, fluttering over purple veins, glowed bright white. I crouched in the dunes, waiting for whatever she was waiting for.
Then she started to sing. I watched the song rise up her throat, before it poured from her lips. Her song was moonlight: cold, clear, dripping with pearls. It’s no wonder the Moon fell in love with her. He sensed a kindred spirit, another beautiful thing that comes alive at night.
The glowing ball reflected in the rippling water grew larger and larger as he descended towards Stella, drawn in by her song.
When the Moon was level with her, Stella stood and walked towards him. She was so confident, my older sister. She placed both her palms on his pockmarked skin. The Moon bobbed, brushing her cheek. Then, he rose into her, enveloping them both in a soft, white light. Stella moaned. Something clenched below my stomach. Should I leave? What if Stella saw me? But I couldn’t look away. The Moon’s light pulsed and scattered across the sand. Without his glow above, the night sky thickened. Stella and the Moon embraced beneath a blue-black blanket, embroidered with stars.
After, Stella lay in the sand, arms stretched around his round body. And there was something about the tenderness of this moment that, after everything, made me feel too much the interloper. I rose and scrambled back to the house, clasping this new secret in my trembling fist.
In the coming months, Stella’s skin began to glow. Her belly swelled. Our parents battered her with questions.
They did not notice the milky sheen of my fingers, how the truth I held within them gleamed the same color as moonlight. I did not show them. I did not tell anyone. Although my sister didn’t know it, we shared that night, stitched together by the secret.
One day, when Stella ran to the beach, fleeing our parents’ fury, I followed.
I found her crouched in the dunes between nodding fronds of sea oats. She looked like a lost beach ball, rocking on her heels, arms and legs wrapped tight around the globe of her body. She didn’t say anything, but I could see frustration in the furrows of her face. Following me around, again.
“I’m sorry, Stella,” I said.
She clicked her tongue, splashed a slice of sand on my feet. The callous whip of her hand said it all. What do you know?
I crouched next to her, my fist still balled up tight.
She bent her head into the shelf of her swollen breasts, shoulders rising and falling like a wave as she cried.
“I don’t even have a name,” she said, “I don’t know what I’m going to call it.”
I opened my hand, light trickling like sand from my palm. I placed the hand on Stella's belly, just beneath her clasped arms.
“How about Stellaluna?”
My older sister looked up at me, eyes wide. Through jagged breaths, her lips curved in a shaky smile. She unclasped her arms, hands kneading in the sand on either side of her.
“Stellaluna,” she breathed. Then she placed her hand over mine on her stomach.
Such an important reminder — thank you!
this is so beautiful and moving omg