I hate rejection. Hate it. Yet as a writer, I court it. I constantly approach strangers and ask them for their opinion of my freshly hatched, brain-baby. Sometimes, and I know this is a shock, they don’t think my brain baby is adorable. Instead they point out it is suspiciously sticky (actually something I told my cousin about his kid once, I’m a horrible person…and yet that was a very sticky, organically fed child) and could probably do with getting a wash and put into better fitting clothes.

At which point, obviously, I throw myself on the ground in a frothing, flailing pile of wounded, artistic feels and refuse to get up until someone gives me a bar of Cadbury’s Caramel. Not Fruit and Nut. I do not want rogue, raw nuts when I’m sad, what is wrong with you?

Anyhow, I bring this up because I recently received a rejection letter from a publisher. It was actually a lovely and helpful letter, with the writer going to the trouble to include constructive feedback (and if they are reading this, I really did appreciate that and thank you). Nevertheless, it was still a rejection and that sucks enough to warrant flopping around in a pile of misery chocolate.

Or it used to. When I first started taking writing seriously at University, I could afford to go into a decline at the drop of a hat. It was kind of expected, to be honest. I could withdraw to my room – or an appropriately artsy coffee shop – and wallow in feeling like a gothic, misunderstood artist. I would whine, I would sulk, I would sit with dead, uninspired fingers because, dear god, what was the point when my precious brain-baby lay rejected and unloved in a drawer?!

I may have also been a bit over-dramatic. Don’t even ask about my many and varied revenge plans! Ok, there was one. It was always the same, I’d eat a lot of asparagus, visit their office and piddle in a pot plant like an aggrieved, literary cat.

As a putative adult with a job and a diet, who has the time for all that? I mean, literally. These days I couldn’t fit it in even I wanted to (and I kind of do, it was sorta satisfying in a self-flagellatory way). I can barely (as in I haven’t for months) schedule in a 30min drive to the swimming pool, never mind a round the UK revenge-wee tour. Instead, I have perfected TA Moore’s stream-lined, time-efficient, and trademarked*: Five Stages of Rejection.

1: Acceptance. ‘They’re right. I suck. I am the worst. I should chew off my own fingers RIGHT NOW so that I never commit writing again. I should do it before some sort of court of literary crimes is convened to make it mandatory.’ This stage masquerades as something useful – the willingness to listen to constructive criticism – but really isn’t. It is partially looking for someone to reassure you that you don’t suck, like at all, and mostly just jumping over the ‘constructive’ part of the criticism, by refusing to fix anything on the grounds you’ll just make it worse. It is more alluring than it sounds – because it sounds like a self-indulgent puddle of snotty whining, and is – but needs to be moved past. These days I can knock this stage out in under an hour, and probably get some vacuuming in at the same time.

2: Anger. ‘Who the hell do they think they are! I bet they didn’t even read my literary masterpiece, they just want to publish the same old pablum/their nephews/their editor’s nephews! They wouldn’t know good writing if someone snuck into their offices and widdled in their succulents.’ Basically, your (checks wiki) Id comes out, stamps around your brain like Godzilla in any city we’ve ever seen him visit, and holds its breath until it turns blue. Even more satisfying than stage one, but marginally more helpful. No, really. I mean, there’s nothing useful in all that justifying yourself twaddle you come out with, but it does generate a lot of energy. As long as you don’t spend too long here  – and some people do get stuck in this stage, and spend their careers telling people ‘the publishing machine just isn’t ready for my genius’ or some such shite – you can give yourself a bit of an extra spurt into stage three. I usually dial this one in, because I just find being angry exhausting and it can really easily cycle back up into stage one, ‘no, no, actually they’re right. I suck. Sorry, everyone false alarm. Back to the starting blocks.’

3: Creativity. ‘Fine! They didn’t like this, so I’ll just write something NEW. Something even better. Something they will love the shoes off!’ It’s not a bad stage, but after the fifth ‘new, better thing’ that doesn’t get past chapter one, you need to move on. Do keep all those new ideas, though. You tend to never be satisfied at this point, because the only thing you really want is for the rejector that started it all to appear in your room and go, ‘Man, that’s awesome, that’s just what I wanted!’. That doesn’t mean none of the ideas could have potential if you come back to them later.

4: Depression. ‘Poor, sad manuscript. I worked so hard on you and it turns out you suck.’ This is sort of a more productive version of stage one, where you admit you are disappointed the manuscript wasn’t going to make Neil Gaiman throw up his hands and pass on his crumpled coat and shaggy do of writerdom. It’s just less performative, and you actually do the useful thing of looking at the manuscript to see if it sucked as much as they said. Which leads into stage five.

5: Bargaining. ‘Huh. Well, actually I don’t think it’s that bad. I mean, they’re right in what they said about my dialogue there, but I do like the characters. Oh, actually so did they. That’s good. Huh, I don’t agree with what they said about the worldbuilding, but if I tweak this bit here to make that more obvious…that would solve the problem?’ This stage is actually constructive, and you can dig into what the criticism you received said about your strengths and weaknesses, tweak the narrative, think about what you could change to make it a better piece of writing. Then you do the work, send the manuscript off and wait for it to start all over again.

I know I jest, but actually these stages are useful for me. Framing them as stages helps me stop cycling back to stage one, getting frustrated and angry with the whole process gives me the energy to stop eating chocolate and vacuuming, throwing myself into new projects gives me the distance I need to come back and look at my manuscript with a less attached eye and admit it’s not the most precious brain-baby to ever be late-night typed into existence. I know there are a lot of people out there who don’t have to break it all down like this, but I think it is useful to look at your reaction to rejection/criticism and see if there’s anything you could do better. I mean, when I started I spent all my time ping-ponging between stage one and stage three, like some recently divorced suburbanite and their string of ever-younger dates. No editing the stuff that had almost worked, just starting over from scratch every time.

That’s rubbish, it gets you literally nowhere.

Another writer I used to know was so desperate to avoid any of the above steps, they spent a year writing and rewriting the first page of their magnum opus. Or there was a guy who took EVERY criticism as gospel (because, hey, sometimes what an editor doesn’t like can just be what an editor doesn’t like. You should probably listen to it, but you don’t have to put it into practice) and cut his poor manuscript to shreds trying to keep up with it all.

You gotta do you, of course, but I find knowing my reactions helpful. What used to be a dramatic sulk of unspecified length, can now be pushed through in about a week. I could do it in less time, but I really do like stage three and, frankly, sometimes you just want a Cadbury’s Caramel bar.

So, yeah constructive criticism is absolutely one of the most useful things you can get as a writer. I totally appreciate it, and will take it on board (within four to five working days). However, sometimes – behind my face – I am having a little Idzilla moment…and that’s ok.