8 ms·

Why you should aim for 100 rejections a year

112 points by nathell 10y ago

iokevins 10y ago
I wish the article included an image of this desk : ) "While procrastinating on writing my MFA thesis, I found an ancient wooden desk on the street, pulled it into my apartment, and started shellacking it with hard-earned rejection slips. It became my writing desk."
blakesterz 10y ago
In his On Writing Book, Stephen King has a section or maybe even a chapter on this rejection stuff. I think he said that there was one rejection in particular that made all the difference for him because it came back with ideas and encouragement.I think he also did something where he kept all his rejections as well. It's always interesting to see how famous authors handled being rejected way back when they were getting started.
- cm3 10y ago
  If only job interviews would also result in real feedback. These days, probably due to anti-discrimination laws, you never get a reason. It's always just "thanks for your time". That's all. You're left guessing what went wrong and likely end up not focusing on what was the real cause which you do realize and want to self-improve.
  - koralatov 10y ago
    I couldn't agree more. I'd kill for some useful, thoughtful feedback. That said, I'd kill for even a form rejection most of the time; nowadays, it seems never letting you know is the new form rejection.
    - cm3 10y ago
      Only happened to me once, but zero response is bad, yes. However, it's not much worse than the neutral "thanks, bye" you get all the time. It's hard to stay motivated when all the interviews go well, or so you think, until the final thank-you email.
      - a3n 10y ago
        "Thanks, bye" frees your mind from having to wonder about that position. It's closure. If you don't get feedback, you can still do a bit of post mortem; you may not come to the same conclusion that the hiring org would have, but you will gain some insight into yourself.
        cm3 10y ago
        Because the occasions where I didn't get any closing responses have been with places that seemed to be unprofessional in the hiring process, I actually had an easier time dismissing those, especially after learning more about some of the from ex-employees.
    - wpietri 10y ago
      My tip: try asking for the feedback in person. If after an interview somebody asks for feedback, I'll generally give it to them. The details are fresh in our heads, I can carefully calibrate my answer to the person's mood, and we can discuss anything that is confusing or upsetting. Once we've filled the positions, though, it's much harder to give feedback. I've got a number of people I'm turning down, so it'd be a lot of work. Details are fuzzier. And often the real reason is something unsatisfying, like, "this person was marginally better in a few key areas; that added up". (If we've done our pre-screening well, almost everybody we interview is hireable, so often the true advice is something depressingly anodyne, like, "keep trying" or "more experience would have helped".) But really, if you want feedback, I'd find some way to set up mock interviews with people you trust. There's a lot of feedback I won't give because I don't think the person is ready to hear it. E.g., I once interviewed a person who was a bluffer. They failed the pair programming portion of the interview spectacularly, to the extent that I ended it early. When they asked for feedback, I told them that they should definitely work on their TDD skills. But the honest answer would have been, "Go get a therapist and start working on your personal issues, because you have a pervasive character problem." That's an extreme case, but hopefully you can see the problem. As John Scalzi says [1], "There are a lot of people who, when they say, 'I’d love feedback,' actually mean 'I want a hug.'" Those people can be very unpleasant when you give them actual feedback. [1] http://whatever.scalzi.com/2007/01/23/what-to-know-before-you-ask-me-to-read-your-unpublished-work/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2007/01/23/what-to-know-before-yo...
    - ddebernardy 10y ago
      It's not that simple though. I occasionally give as constructive feedback as I can when asked. (And I sometimes cut interviews short explaining why, to avoid wasting my time and the candidate's.) But honestly, giving feedback can backlash. As in, the candidate will reply back two or three times by email, trying to argue their case. "We liked you a lot but we preferred another candidate" is about as neutral as it is uninformative, but has the merit of cutting a conversation short.
  - jt2190 10y ago
    You cannot trust any feedback you get from a company, because more than likely they have no idea what they're doing, and the reason they rejected you is something close to: "Candidate rejected for random, irrelevant reason."
  - Isamu 10y ago
    In the old days, you often got a letter of rejection after an interview, and I started collecting them. That turned it around into a fun game. And after a while, I realized that several of them were based on a common template. There must be some old HR book out there with an example rejection letter that many corporate HR departments used. It was calculated to let you down easy, to avoid making you mad and miserable. Point being, it was always rare that you would get actionable feedback from an interview, because it was always risky. Now it is just rare to the point of non-existent.
    - cm3 10y ago
      All I'm looking for is one of: - you didn't meet our (technical) expectations - we cannot meet your expectations - you're qualified but we cannot pay that much - you're generally qualified, but we need a Foo Expert today The common letter one gets is "we chose somebody else who is a better fit". Sure, but what exactly fit better? I don't think this is too much to ask for. Even that kind of feedback is non-existent, and I'm off wondering whether it's one of those or some remark I made or something else. The most honest feedback I got was in small shops which didn't put an HR department between me and the CTO/CEO.
      - cm3 10y ago
        That said, I have to learn to read people's questions better. In hindsight I believe some of the "let's go lunch with the CTO and these three people" setups are using a semi-informal chit-chat to fish for character incompatibilities with the rest of the team.
      - smithgeek 10y ago
        This would be nice, but thinking about the interview process as it currently stands, I'm not sure if it would end up being that helpful. As an industry we're really pretty terrible at interviewing and identifying talent so maybe not getting any feedback is just as useful.
    - cm3 10y ago
      Having realized some discrepancies in my skillset, I would actually prefer honest but temporarily-demotivating feedback. If not, I'll start questioning more stuff than actually has been a deal breaker. Yes, it will be painful for a while to hear "you cannot sing", but I'd prefer it. The more specific the better. After all, we're adults and I have to deal with my personal bugs daily anyway. Of course, this assumes the feedback is qualified, but that's up to my impression of how much I value their feedback. If I have the impression they're totally unqualified, I might not spend a second thought on their judgement.
- Procrastes 10y ago
  That was a great story. King slapped the rejections on a nail on his wall until the stack was thicker than the nail was tall and overflowed. The author of this article mentions that as an inspiration.
benten10 10y ago
I found this one incredibly interesting, but for mostly tangential reason: relationships. I have mostly concentrated on trying to find reasonably likeable, kind, successful, and attractive partners. But because of that I have had a lot less variety of experience with different kinds of people. Perhaps a better strategy is to date a lot by uhh, focusing less on 'quality', so that 'relationship skills' are learned better? What do you people think?
- cheriot 10y ago
  Presumably you don't mean dating someone for practice. Defying your rational side when it feels right is a legitimate strategy.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- vijayr 10y ago
  I dunno, wouldn't this amount to 'using' people? How would you feel if someone else did this to you so they could practice their relationship skills, in the hope of finding 'quality' people (as you mentioned) according to their definition of quality? It is true relationships come and go in our lives but deliberately using someone for relationship skills practice sounds kinda weird. Interesting question though - thank you for bringing it up.
  - devishard 10y ago
    So, serious question, what kind of dating would you consider not using the other person? Isn't any sort of dating just an exchange where both parties hope to have their needs met? This just sounds like benten10 is just acknowledging that is current need is to gain experience dating. There are certainly lots of people out there with this need so I doubt benten10 will have trouble finding people whose needs are compatible with his. Sure, there are people who don't want to go on "practice" dates, but there is literally no human characteristic that someone out there doesn't want. In the long run I want to have kids, so if I could somehow filter out all the people who won't want to have kids in 5-10 years, I'd do it, but it's not realistically possible to do that. Why is "I want practice dating" different from "I want to have kids"?
EGreg 10y ago
I will say it more accurately: The first step to success is making it safe to fail.
- collyw 10y ago
  Which is far easier if you are wealthy.
  - chasing 10y ago
    But entirely possible even if you're not!
  - iamgopal 10y ago
    and not at all funny, it hurts more when you can not find rationale for failure other than yourself.
pstuart 10y ago
By making a game out of rejection a man conquers fear: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/16/377239011/by-making-a-game-out-of-rejection-a-man-conquers-fear http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/16/37723901...
wiradikusuma 10y ago
But how do you avoid from becoming skeptical, like, "Why bother focusing on quality, if it's going to waste anyway. Maybe I should keep throwing shit (quantity) and see which ones stick."? So you end up producing mediocrity and leaning towards luck.
- pboutros 10y ago
  That's a good question. I think it's probably by enjoying what you do - if you enjoy it and keep learning as you go, you'll probably get better. Basically sounds like a way to get to the "10,000 hour rule".
- BlackjackCF 10y ago
  I think the idea behind it is that with every rejection, you'd hopefully try to improve a little or start on a new project. Eventually you'd learn something new. The other thing is to conquer the fear of rejection. There are a lot of people who get stuck not submitting stuff simply because they're afraid of getting rejected. But not trying is as good as a rejection.
  - Throwaway23412 10y ago
    I remember a recent submission that made an unintuitive argument: quantity = quality. If you focus on quality from the beginning, you spend too much time in analysis paralysis and get less feedback on your progress. If you focus on quantity from the beginning, you get more feedback the more you produce. It's better to learn what not to do.
    - CPLX 10y ago
      Indeed. As the apocryphal Stalin quote goes, quantity has a quality all its own.
- dietrichepp 10y ago
  Not everyone responds to rejection that way.
- 10y ago
costcopizza 10y ago
I don't know about straight quantity. There's definitely a balance. For example: my roommate and I both write songs in our free time. He goes for quantity (around 6 songs a month), me quality (1-ish song a month). I'll spend a week just trying to get a transition to a chorus or bridge. His songs often don't even have choruses or bridges. It would drive me crazy having a bunch of half-baked songs (or stories) that are almost there but are missing the next step. At some point you will have to put the hammer down and think "hey this idea is strong and deserves a strong conclusion/climax/chorus/whatever art form" rather than quickly moving on. However if you're just starting out, significantly lean quantity as your earliest works aren't likely worth the time.
verisimilidude 10y ago
I like the general idea here, about channeling rejections into motivation and progress. That applies to much of life. But when it comes to the publishing industry, I can't help but feel the author is advocating yesterday's game. Striving for rejections is fine, but are authors of her mind striving for the right rejections? The most productive rejections? Most publishing houses have a "slush pile" of submitted manuscripts that's always enormous and largely neglected. Usually it's junior staff, interns or fresh grads, who are tasked with "processing the pile" whenever they get a scrap of free time, which is rare. And when they do get around to your manuscript, they'll often just skim the proposal and maybe read a paragraph or two before throwing it into a "review" or "reject" pile. Every time I've seen this scene, it's usually a hundred in "reject" for every one in "review". What is a rejection like this really worth? You've spent maybe years of your life on this manuscript and some kid rejected it in under a minute. IMO, at this point, it's better to seek rejections directly from the market via online self-publishing. Instead of just putting together endless submissions, e-publishing puts the focus on the things that will make you successful regardless: writing for a real audience, soliciting feedback and building community, working on self-promotion, etc. If you do eventually want to go through a traditional publisher, then "I sold 500 copies on Amazon" is going to speak a lot louder than "I assure you people will love my flowery prose".
- geerlingguy 10y ago
  > IMO, at this point, it's better to seek rejections directly from the market via online self-publishing. I was going to write exactly this. I looked into publishing my book in a traditional manner and found the entire ordeal strange and messy. Instead, I put a cover image and description on LeanPub, found there were 50+ people interested in it (just posting it on my Twitter account and emailing a couple people I knew), and decided to write an intro and a chapter or two to test the waters. Two years and 8,000 sales later, I'm glad I didn't stake my idea of being a successful writer (or my motivation) on getting a random editor at an institution that would like to suck out 50+% of my potential profits. Nowadays, no matter what the type of writing, you can test the waters by self-publishing. The upside is any success you have can result in real dollars/income instead of a stressful and tenuous relationship with a traditional publisher! Ironically, after my book started becoming successful, I had reps from the major tech publishers start asking if I would like to relicense the book to them in exchange for their marketing, while simultaneously giving up about 40% of the profit margin I currently enjoy.
known 10y ago
Rejection massively reduces the IQ http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051 http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051
CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
I'm on a 20-consecutive-month talk rejection streak from various tech conferences in both the PHP and information security communities. The more you face rejection, the less it stings. But this is a double-edged sword: It's still very difficult to muster up the effort to try again. Not because of pain avoidance, but because it feels like a waste of time. Trying to game this might be a perverse way to break this cycle, but I couldn't do it. Good luck to anyone else who tries.
- geerlingguy 10y ago
  Have you tried local Meetup communities/user groups? A lot of times, the larger conferences want to see that you've had at least nominal experience with basic public speaking and/or creating a logical presentation (as a baseline). Just having that won't necessarily get your talks accepted... but it helps.
  - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
    While that's probably good advice for someone starting out, I've spoken several times at Security B-Sides and at a few tech events in downtown Orlando. The rejection reason I'm always offered (when I actually receive one) is a watered-down remix of the following: Your talk idea was excellent and highly rated! But we have previously obligated ourselves to representing the big name projects in the community, so we're instead going to give this spot to someone who wants to talk about a trivial improvement to Drupal or something only relevant to WordPress freelancers. Also, we already have an all-day security training and our judges toss cryptography in the same general category, so we consider it redundant. (This is obviously editorialized.) There's been a lot of talk about fixing a persistent cultural problem in the PHP community, where it's always the same speakers at every PHP event. And conference organizers pay lip service to wanting to do something about it. But then they turn around and invite the same people to do the same talks/training and then block off entire categories from being spoken about by anyone else. That's the part that actually annoys me: "We're working on this problem, but not really." As far as infosec conferences go, I've had schedule conflicts with everything except DEFCON and Black Hat, so being rejected there is probably just, "You're aiming too high. Try again in 10 years when you have real skills." (That being said, my DEFCON Crypto & Privacy Village talk hasn't been rejected yet, so 20 months might end up being my high score.)
gentleteblor 10y ago
I've gotten more than a hundred rejections in a year (140+), and i gotta say, it was terrible. Having said that, i think this is generally good advice. Looking back, there are a lot of similarities to the common "failed startup" experience. I worked on the novel for five years (got plenty of feedback along the way) but getting it picked up (traction?) was a bust. And it wasn't "safe to fail" as someone mentioned up above. It hurt, emotionally, physically (90 hr weeks). Lesson learned. I try to be comfortable with failure now, it's not a friend or anything, but it'll stop by, a lot.
dmourati 10y ago
After just checking my email, I've got 99 left to go this year!

112 points by nathell 10y ago

I wish the article included an image of this desk : ) "While procrastinating on writing my MFA thesis, I found an ancient wooden desk on the street, pulled it into my apartment, and started shellacking it with hard-earned rejection slips. It became my writing desk."

blakesterz 10y ago

In his On Writing Book, Stephen King has a section or maybe even a chapter on this rejection stuff. I think he said that there was one rejection in particular that made all the difference for him because it came back with ideas and encouragement.I think he also did something where he kept all his rejections as well. It's always interesting to see how famous authors handled being rejected way back when they were getting started.

cm3 10y ago
If only job interviews would also result in real feedback. These days, probably due to anti-discrimination laws, you never get a reason. It's always just "thanks for your time". That's all. You're left guessing what went wrong and likely end up not focusing on what was the real cause which you do realize and want to self-improve.
- koralatov 10y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I'd kill for some useful, thoughtful feedback. That said, I'd kill for even a form rejection most of the time; nowadays, it seems never letting you know is the new form rejection.
  - cm3 10y ago
    Only happened to me once, but zero response is bad, yes. However, it's not much worse than the neutral "thanks, bye" you get all the time. It's hard to stay motivated when all the interviews go well, or so you think, until the final thank-you email.
    - a3n 10y ago
      "Thanks, bye" frees your mind from having to wonder about that position. It's closure. If you don't get feedback, you can still do a bit of post mortem; you may not come to the same conclusion that the hiring org would have, but you will gain some insight into yourself.
      - cm3 10y ago
        Because the occasions where I didn't get any closing responses have been with places that seemed to be unprofessional in the hiring process, I actually had an easier time dismissing those, especially after learning more about some of the from ex-employees.
  - wpietri 10y ago
    My tip: try asking for the feedback in person. If after an interview somebody asks for feedback, I'll generally give it to them. The details are fresh in our heads, I can carefully calibrate my answer to the person's mood, and we can discuss anything that is confusing or upsetting. Once we've filled the positions, though, it's much harder to give feedback. I've got a number of people I'm turning down, so it'd be a lot of work. Details are fuzzier. And often the real reason is something unsatisfying, like, "this person was marginally better in a few key areas; that added up". (If we've done our pre-screening well, almost everybody we interview is hireable, so often the true advice is something depressingly anodyne, like, "keep trying" or "more experience would have helped".) But really, if you want feedback, I'd find some way to set up mock interviews with people you trust. There's a lot of feedback I won't give because I don't think the person is ready to hear it. E.g., I once interviewed a person who was a bluffer. They failed the pair programming portion of the interview spectacularly, to the extent that I ended it early. When they asked for feedback, I told them that they should definitely work on their TDD skills. But the honest answer would have been, "Go get a therapist and start working on your personal issues, because you have a pervasive character problem." That's an extreme case, but hopefully you can see the problem. As John Scalzi says [1], "There are a lot of people who, when they say, 'I’d love feedback,' actually mean 'I want a hug.'" Those people can be very unpleasant when you give them actual feedback. [1] http://whatever.scalzi.com/2007/01/23/what-to-know-before-you-ask-me-to-read-your-unpublished-work/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2007/01/23/what-to-know-before-yo...
  - ddebernardy 10y ago
    It's not that simple though. I occasionally give as constructive feedback as I can when asked. (And I sometimes cut interviews short explaining why, to avoid wasting my time and the candidate's.) But honestly, giving feedback can backlash. As in, the candidate will reply back two or three times by email, trying to argue their case. "We liked you a lot but we preferred another candidate" is about as neutral as it is uninformative, but has the merit of cutting a conversation short.
- jt2190 10y ago
  You cannot trust any feedback you get from a company, because more than likely they have no idea what they're doing, and the reason they rejected you is something close to: "Candidate rejected for random, irrelevant reason."
- Isamu 10y ago
  In the old days, you often got a letter of rejection after an interview, and I started collecting them. That turned it around into a fun game. And after a while, I realized that several of them were based on a common template. There must be some old HR book out there with an example rejection letter that many corporate HR departments used. It was calculated to let you down easy, to avoid making you mad and miserable. Point being, it was always rare that you would get actionable feedback from an interview, because it was always risky. Now it is just rare to the point of non-existent.
  - cm3 10y ago
    All I'm looking for is one of: - you didn't meet our (technical) expectations - we cannot meet your expectations - you're qualified but we cannot pay that much - you're generally qualified, but we need a Foo Expert today The common letter one gets is "we chose somebody else who is a better fit". Sure, but what exactly fit better? I don't think this is too much to ask for. Even that kind of feedback is non-existent, and I'm off wondering whether it's one of those or some remark I made or something else. The most honest feedback I got was in small shops which didn't put an HR department between me and the CTO/CEO.
    - cm3 10y ago
      That said, I have to learn to read people's questions better. In hindsight I believe some of the "let's go lunch with the CTO and these three people" setups are using a semi-informal chit-chat to fish for character incompatibilities with the rest of the team.
    - smithgeek 10y ago
      This would be nice, but thinking about the interview process as it currently stands, I'm not sure if it would end up being that helpful. As an industry we're really pretty terrible at interviewing and identifying talent so maybe not getting any feedback is just as useful.
  - cm3 10y ago
    Having realized some discrepancies in my skillset, I would actually prefer honest but temporarily-demotivating feedback. If not, I'll start questioning more stuff than actually has been a deal breaker. Yes, it will be painful for a while to hear "you cannot sing", but I'd prefer it. The more specific the better. After all, we're adults and I have to deal with my personal bugs daily anyway. Of course, this assumes the feedback is qualified, but that's up to my impression of how much I value their feedback. If I have the impression they're totally unqualified, I might not spend a second thought on their judgement.
Procrastes 10y ago
That was a great story. King slapped the rejections on a nail on his wall until the stack was thicker than the nail was tall and overflowed. The author of this article mentions that as an inspiration.

benten10 10y ago

I found this one incredibly interesting, but for mostly tangential reason: relationships. I have mostly concentrated on trying to find reasonably likeable, kind, successful, and attractive partners. But because of that I have had a lot less variety of experience with different kinds of people. Perhaps a better strategy is to date a lot by uhh, focusing less on 'quality', so that 'relationship skills' are learned better? What do you people think?

cheriot 10y ago
Presumably you don't mean dating someone for practice. Defying your rational side when it feels right is a legitimate strategy.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
vijayr 10y ago
I dunno, wouldn't this amount to 'using' people? How would you feel if someone else did this to you so they could practice their relationship skills, in the hope of finding 'quality' people (as you mentioned) according to their definition of quality? It is true relationships come and go in our lives but deliberately using someone for relationship skills practice sounds kinda weird. Interesting question though - thank you for bringing it up.
- devishard 10y ago
  So, serious question, what kind of dating would you consider not using the other person? Isn't any sort of dating just an exchange where both parties hope to have their needs met? This just sounds like benten10 is just acknowledging that is current need is to gain experience dating. There are certainly lots of people out there with this need so I doubt benten10 will have trouble finding people whose needs are compatible with his. Sure, there are people who don't want to go on "practice" dates, but there is literally no human characteristic that someone out there doesn't want. In the long run I want to have kids, so if I could somehow filter out all the people who won't want to have kids in 5-10 years, I'd do it, but it's not realistically possible to do that. Why is "I want practice dating" different from "I want to have kids"?

EGreg 10y ago

I will say it more accurately: The first step to success is making it safe to fail.

collyw 10y ago
Which is far easier if you are wealthy.
- chasing 10y ago
  But entirely possible even if you're not!
- iamgopal 10y ago
  and not at all funny, it hurts more when you can not find rationale for failure other than yourself.

pstuart 10y ago

By making a game out of rejection a man conquers fear: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/16/377239011/by-making-a-game-out-of-rejection-a-man-conquers-fear http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/16/37723901...

wiradikusuma 10y ago

But how do you avoid from becoming skeptical, like, "Why bother focusing on quality, if it's going to waste anyway. Maybe I should keep throwing shit (quantity) and see which ones stick."? So you end up producing mediocrity and leaning towards luck.

pboutros 10y ago
That's a good question. I think it's probably by enjoying what you do - if you enjoy it and keep learning as you go, you'll probably get better. Basically sounds like a way to get to the "10,000 hour rule".
BlackjackCF 10y ago
I think the idea behind it is that with every rejection, you'd hopefully try to improve a little or start on a new project. Eventually you'd learn something new. The other thing is to conquer the fear of rejection. There are a lot of people who get stuck not submitting stuff simply because they're afraid of getting rejected. But not trying is as good as a rejection.
- Throwaway23412 10y ago
  I remember a recent submission that made an unintuitive argument: quantity = quality. If you focus on quality from the beginning, you spend too much time in analysis paralysis and get less feedback on your progress. If you focus on quantity from the beginning, you get more feedback the more you produce. It's better to learn what not to do.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    Indeed. As the apocryphal Stalin quote goes, quantity has a quality all its own.
dietrichepp 10y ago
Not everyone responds to rejection that way.
10y ago

costcopizza 10y ago

I don't know about straight quantity. There's definitely a balance. For example: my roommate and I both write songs in our free time. He goes for quantity (around 6 songs a month), me quality (1-ish song a month). I'll spend a week just trying to get a transition to a chorus or bridge. His songs often don't even have choruses or bridges. It would drive me crazy having a bunch of half-baked songs (or stories) that are almost there but are missing the next step. At some point you will have to put the hammer down and think "hey this idea is strong and deserves a strong conclusion/climax/chorus/whatever art form" rather than quickly moving on. However if you're just starting out, significantly lean quantity as your earliest works aren't likely worth the time.

verisimilidude 10y ago

I like the general idea here, about channeling rejections into motivation and progress. That applies to much of life. But when it comes to the publishing industry, I can't help but feel the author is advocating yesterday's game. Striving for rejections is fine, but are authors of her mind striving for the right rejections? The most productive rejections? Most publishing houses have a "slush pile" of submitted manuscripts that's always enormous and largely neglected. Usually it's junior staff, interns or fresh grads, who are tasked with "processing the pile" whenever they get a scrap of free time, which is rare. And when they do get around to your manuscript, they'll often just skim the proposal and maybe read a paragraph or two before throwing it into a "review" or "reject" pile. Every time I've seen this scene, it's usually a hundred in "reject" for every one in "review". What is a rejection like this really worth? You've spent maybe years of your life on this manuscript and some kid rejected it in under a minute. IMO, at this point, it's better to seek rejections directly from the market via online self-publishing. Instead of just putting together endless submissions, e-publishing puts the focus on the things that will make you successful regardless: writing for a real audience, soliciting feedback and building community, working on self-promotion, etc. If you do eventually want to go through a traditional publisher, then "I sold 500 copies on Amazon" is going to speak a lot louder than "I assure you people will love my flowery prose".

geerlingguy 10y ago
> IMO, at this point, it's better to seek rejections directly from the market via online self-publishing. I was going to write exactly this. I looked into publishing my book in a traditional manner and found the entire ordeal strange and messy. Instead, I put a cover image and description on LeanPub, found there were 50+ people interested in it (just posting it on my Twitter account and emailing a couple people I knew), and decided to write an intro and a chapter or two to test the waters. Two years and 8,000 sales later, I'm glad I didn't stake my idea of being a successful writer (or my motivation) on getting a random editor at an institution that would like to suck out 50+% of my potential profits. Nowadays, no matter what the type of writing, you can test the waters by self-publishing. The upside is any success you have can result in real dollars/income instead of a stressful and tenuous relationship with a traditional publisher! Ironically, after my book started becoming successful, I had reps from the major tech publishers start asking if I would like to relicense the book to them in exchange for their marketing, while simultaneously giving up about 40% of the profit margin I currently enjoy.

known 10y ago

Rejection massively reduces the IQ http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051 http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago

I'm on a 20-consecutive-month talk rejection streak from various tech conferences in both the PHP and information security communities. The more you face rejection, the less it stings. But this is a double-edged sword: It's still very difficult to muster up the effort to try again. Not because of pain avoidance, but because it feels like a waste of time. Trying to game this might be a perverse way to break this cycle, but I couldn't do it. Good luck to anyone else who tries.

geerlingguy 10y ago
Have you tried local Meetup communities/user groups? A lot of times, the larger conferences want to see that you've had at least nominal experience with basic public speaking and/or creating a logical presentation (as a baseline). Just having that won't necessarily get your talks accepted... but it helps.
- CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  While that's probably good advice for someone starting out, I've spoken several times at Security B-Sides and at a few tech events in downtown Orlando. The rejection reason I'm always offered (when I actually receive one) is a watered-down remix of the following: Your talk idea was excellent and highly rated! But we have previously obligated ourselves to representing the big name projects in the community, so we're instead going to give this spot to someone who wants to talk about a trivial improvement to Drupal or something only relevant to WordPress freelancers. Also, we already have an all-day security training and our judges toss cryptography in the same general category, so we consider it redundant. (This is obviously editorialized.) There's been a lot of talk about fixing a persistent cultural problem in the PHP community, where it's always the same speakers at every PHP event. And conference organizers pay lip service to wanting to do something about it. But then they turn around and invite the same people to do the same talks/training and then block off entire categories from being spoken about by anyone else. That's the part that actually annoys me: "We're working on this problem, but not really." As far as infosec conferences go, I've had schedule conflicts with everything except DEFCON and Black Hat, so being rejected there is probably just, "You're aiming too high. Try again in 10 years when you have real skills." (That being said, my DEFCON Crypto & Privacy Village talk hasn't been rejected yet, so 20 months might end up being my high score.)

gentleteblor 10y ago

I've gotten more than a hundred rejections in a year (140+), and i gotta say, it was terrible. Having said that, i think this is generally good advice. Looking back, there are a lot of similarities to the common "failed startup" experience. I worked on the novel for five years (got plenty of feedback along the way) but getting it picked up (traction?) was a bust. And it wasn't "safe to fail" as someone mentioned up above. It hurt, emotionally, physically (90 hr weeks). Lesson learned. I try to be comfortable with failure now, it's not a friend or anything, but it'll stop by, a lot.

dmourati 10y ago

After just checking my email, I've got 99 left to go this year!