Hope Darby Writings

One day, I hope to have enough rejection letters to paper an entire wall of my office.

I have been extremely fortunate in one very important regard: I have no problem with rejection. I have no problem having my work criticized, cast aside, and passed over. Every single time I’ve received a rejection letter, I’ve followed it up with an alternative query. More often than not, this gets me accepted or, at the very least, puts me in an editor’s mind enough to ensure future work.

Truly, I owe my high-school journalism teacher major gratitude for this. In the midst of her constant praise of my writing came the many criticisms, both constructive and not, for various articles I handed in to her. In the beginning of our “working” relationship, I was not adept with this criticizm, and one day found myself in tears after what I thought were beautiful words were torn to pieces by this tiny little red-haired leprechaun. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “If you never learn to accept that some of your work is bad, you’ll never appreciate that most of your work is excellent. Don’t expect it to be bad, else that’s all you’ll produce. Just give yourself the freedom to write, and the discipline to edit without mercy, and your good will always outweigh the bad.”

Even back then, I hated to admit when she was right. But thank the stars I got over it, because I couldn’t have accomplished anything without that particular lesson.