How to deal with "no"

As a writer, just as in life, there's a single word that you have to learn to deal with. And you'll hear it a lot. Especially if you're a self-published author like I am. And that's the word "no."

Our society has a hard time with "no" these days. Whether it be not getting picked for the soccer team or that ghastly song "Blurred Lines," people don't want to hear that they can't do something. They don't want to hear that they aren't good enough or that they just aren't right for a job. Or, put simply, they don't want to hear that someone doesn't want what they have to offer. But as an author, you have to get used to hearing this because you're going to hear it.

A lot.

That isn't to say that you're not good enough. It just means that what you have to offer isn't right for the person that you're offering it to. I've had to deal with "no," or even worse, silence, a lot in the past weeks. I've been preparing to do a relaunch of my book and have been planning a blog tour. When you email 25 to 50 blogs a day and you hear back from 3 in a week, sometimes you get discouraged. You start thinking that it would be easier to quit. To just let everything go on its own and not bother.

But that isn't going to get me anywhere. It isn't until we learn to accept that hearing "no" a thousand times is worth hearing "yes" just once that we'll get anywhere. Because sometimes we get more out of the rejection than we do out of the acceptance.

It's out of rejection that we learn to get better, to take criticism, and to refine ourselves to the writer and the person we're supposed to be.