For me, writing is easy. It’s selling my writing that is hard. I hate sending query letters and submissions to agents and publishers. As opposed to writing, querying is tedious and uncreative. Plus, there’s the whole rejection part.

Every time I see an email in my inbox from an agent or publisher I submitted to, I get butterflies in my stomach. It’s like a roller coaster ride of emotions. I see that I got a response, but I don’t yet know whether it’s positive or negative. Like Schrödinger’s cat, until the email is opened, it is both an acceptance and a rejection.

A million thoughts run through my mind of the possibilities if accepted. I see my entire future play out in a matter of seconds. That sale leading to more sales in the future, gaining fans, admiration, and wealth. Then I click on the email and see the answer: “We’re sorry, but…”

It’s like a gut punch every time. They say you’ll get used to rejection, but after literally hundreds of rejected query letters, it still hurts just as much as the first time. That’s what makes sending out the next one so difficult—because I don’t want that feeling again, of false hope and rejection. 

But I have to do it. The only way to get accepted (and in publishing you only need one person to accept you) is to keep putting yourself out there and submitting your work. When I got my first acceptance from a professional publisher for “The Simulation Test,” I was so elated it instantly made up for the hundreds of other rejections. 

In a way it feels like insanity, continuing to send out queries and expecting a different result, but I guess attempting to become a professional writer (or artist of any kind) is kind of insane. The odds are long and the deck is stacked against you. Even if you choose to bypass querying and go the self-publishing route, you will still face rejection. Readers will leave bad reviews—or worse, they will ignore you entirely. But you must grow a thick skin and persevere. Keep writing, keep publishing, and get better at both. Become so good they can’t ignore you. 

Becoming a successful professional fiction writer is extremely difficult—but when I really think about it, I wouldn’t want it any other way. If it was easy to become a writer and anyone could do it, then everyone would do it, and I’d have an even harder time standing out among the crowd. This is the primary problem self-published writers face. 

The only way to succeed is to be relentless and keep submitting/publishing despite rejections until you’re finally accepted. That’s what all of history’s greatest writers and artists did. Often the best of the best weren’t accepted until after their deaths. Unless you are willing to accept that as a potential outcome (in fact, a likely outcome) and still want to devote your life to writing regardless, then you might as well not write at all. There are easier things to do with your life that will make you more money. 

I am not writing for money or agents or publishers or even readers. I am writing for myself—to create a body of work representing my consciousness that will outlive me, and hopefully last forever. Anyone else in the present or future who chooses to read and support my work is gravy. If you are primarily writing for yourself, no one can reject you but you.