Winston Churchill once said that success is the ability to stumble from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
Rejection is a part of both my professional lives, I'm afraid and it gets to you. When you make your money using your creative mind, it is hard not to take rejection personally.
So, how does a writer or artist work through that barrage of negative feedback? The first step is to realize it is much easier to say no than it is to say yes.
Whether you are shopping a book to an agent, applying for work or seeking gallery representation, "no" is the standard.
That no isn't necessarily linked to your work product either. It may be the result of budgeting problems, for example. Maybe it is an artifact of last night's one too many martinis...Who knows?
There is no easy answer.
The most important thing is to learn to stumble through the rejections with a bit of style. If there is something to learn from that no, great, take what you can get and leave the rest behind. Set long-term goals and visualize the rejections as the steps that get you there.
Now go out, get over it and enjoy some art.
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