Rejection.

What do you feel when you hear/see that word?

A single word like rejection can damage us. It can destroy us. It can make us feel unwanted, unaccomplished, unmotivated.

Rejection: it scares us away from whatever we were trying to do in the first place. It may cause anger, and fear, and self-destruction. All in all, it’s safe to say that most of us fear that one little word, and we have a right to. Who would ever want to get rejected from something that we want or worked hard to get?

In the month of November, I applied for the Children’s Literature Fellowship Program, a program that would allow me to increase my writing skills and push me to complete a manuscript which, then, I would get to present to agents and publishers. It’s every writer's dream. I worked for weeks on my application, really believing that I would make it into this competitive program.

As you can all probably guess by now, I didn’t get accepted.

I’m not going to lie: it stung.

I thought I had what it took to work side-by-side with incredible authors. I thought I had a great application under my belt, and I thought, maybe, I had a good shot. Turns out, I didn’t.

Rejection.

Just like lots of people, I’m scared of that word too, but I’m learning not to be anymore. The truth is, I’m more scared of being scared my whole life, running from words and situations because I don’t want to fail. It’s good to fail. It’s good to be rejected.

Maybe I wasn’t ready to get involved in the program. Failing gives everyone the opportunity to do better, seek better opportunities and try harder. Getting rejected from the program tells me that I just need to work harder, not to give up. Just because one gets rejected doesn’t mean one is not good enough; it doesn’t mean one should just give up.

Rejection gives you the opportunity to fight back, to keep pushing forward, and to show the person/people that rejected you that they will be sorry.

Being rejected is not an excuse not to try. Without trying, you will never know what you are capable of.