Lately I've been thinking a lot about something I heard at AWP. One of the panelists, who had gone to the MFA program at Iowa, said that a few years after he graduated, about 70 percent of his class had stopped writing. I had heard stuff like this before, but it was still surprising. There's life, and day jobs, and everything else, but there's also the fact that dealing with rejection is a separate skill than writing is. I don't find producing, editing, or the admin part of writing hard-- all of these are doing skills, but I'm not good at the rejection part because basically it is dealing with a ball of unpleasant emotions. So these are some strategies I use to deal with rejection, some of which are at least remotely associated with something science-like.
1. Label the emotion your feeling right when the stimulus comes (eg, when you first receive the rejection letter.) I'm talking about using very specific words (ie, not "I feel bad") but really try to articulate what you are feeling with the caveat that you are articulating how you feel right now about what happened, but not making an evaluative judgment about who you are as a result. Feelings only --no associated cognitions. Maybe it would be something like this: I feel really disappointed. My heart is heavy. I thought that press was a perfect match for me. I was really hoping it would work out, and how I feel let down. This is okay-- but what is not okay is then drawing radical conclusions: "I must be a shitty writer. I'm a bad person. Nothing good will ever happen. This is just another piece of evidence that I'm a failure."
Imagine that the emotions are like a giant teabag that has been soaking in water. You have to sit with it. It's sitting on your lap with water seeping out of it and the fact that the water is seeping might be uncomfortable, if you're the sort of person who likes things tidy. This is really a form of mindfulness, where essentially you are saying, "I feel sad and this is where I'm at right now." What goes along with this is the temporal nature of that feeling-- you feel sad right now, you're letting yourself experience it, and it won't last forever. There's nothing evaluative about it. You're supposed to be sad sometimes. Maybe you're like me and you spend a lot of time trying to tamp down on your emotions--or you bad cognitions that run away and you spiral downwards into those evaluative judgments like "...therefore, I am bad." I'm a big believer in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT)--where you combat negative and illogical cognitions. But there's other ways of dealing with negative emotions and some ways work better depending on who you are. The "sit with your feelings" thing is closer to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which has some elements of mindfulness to it. I've been doing it for a couple months now and am finding it surprisingly insightful for me. So give it a whirl, but remember--sit with the feeling, but don't jump into evaluations. Beyond the therapy stuff, there's some evidence from social and clinical psychology that suggests that labeling emotions is a critical part of both understanding them and lessening the pain associated with them. If you're interested you can check these out.
2. Have an arbitrary trigger for your next move. This is something practical you do right after receiving the rejection. It could be going for a run (I remember sprinting like a crazed idiot after the third consecutive time of coming this --> <-- close to getting an NSF fellowship). It could also be something you do automatically related to your project: get something rejected, send out another submission. Every time you pull back from putting yourself out there, you're one step further out the door. But one thing to note: Do something that has a finite end within one session. "Go for run" has a finite ending in one session; "work on book" does not. The point is to give yourself something productive where you feel completion.
3. Create a tag or folder in your email. Mine is called "props." When I receive a meaningful complement about my writing, I send it there. No, not positive things editors said in rejections--stuff not attached to rejections at all. My folder includes (each as a separate email) things like: a note from a friend of mine (not a writer) who was a beta reader for my novella who said that it made him awkwardly sob at the gym, notes from my critique partners that were complementary and made me think "I've conveyed what I wanted to convey." Also included are emails I send to myself as a deliberate form of note taking: something someone said verbally at a workshop. An offhand comment someone made at drinks. Anyhow, the point is to have a folder that you can go through and say, oh hey, this is why I do this. This is to take the focus off "success" and put it back on reaffirming a value that you have--that creating something is worth doing. Focusing on publishing, or awards, or fellowships can take away from this.
4. Stop daydreaming it about making it. This includes imagining other people you think have made it swimming around in their money bin Scrooge McDuck style. Do you remember The Secret? It was an awful self-help book that came out in the 90s that said if you want something, you just have to visualize it really well, and this helps it manifest somehow. This is very stupid. It is a waste of time and seems outrageously classist. There's even some evidence that visualizing saps away the energy you'd use to actually achieve your goal. Part of the problem with such daydreaming is that there's a part of you that might be thinking "If I just had this one thing everything will be all right" or maybe it's "if I just had this one thing, that'll show them." Or maybe it's about proving your worth. Art isn't a meritocracy, so don't hang your self-worth on it. That thing you just applied to won't make you whole. If you're going to daydream about anything, daydream about what your characters are doing. Or Michael Fassbender.
5. Side projects, obviously. Always be working on something you care about, that way everything doesn't hang on one thing.
6. Stay off social media. When it isn't filled with things exploding on the news, it's filled with friends with wonderful news and well-behaved beautiful children and perfectly curated lives seen through Instagram filters where nobody has ingrown hairs. It isn't always a good time for social comparison.
And for your viewing pleasure, my absolute favorite clip about how to deal with emotions "effectively."