What happens when you receive 85 rejection letters
On Writing: And how I'm learning to love my inner-critic
Last year, I joined
's writing community, Sustenance, and one of the prompts she shared was to explore writing a mini-essay in the form of a letter. I used Brenda Miller’s series of letters in “We Regret To Inform You” as inspiration and wrote a letter of rejection to myself from all the agents who passed on my memoir—eighty-five, to be exact. It illuminated my low self-worth in a way that was startling.The piece emerged in a sudden burst last August, just after a family visit in Michigan. I was both filled up and exhausted. I wrote it in the blue morning, with the brightening sky outside my window. My husband and son were sleeping. It was just me, the dawn birds, and my lack of worth spilling onto the page. After I finished, I read it back to myself and thought, “Wait, is this really what I think about myself?” And I’ve been trying to create new beliefs, new thoughts, and new pathways of worth ever since.
I’m putting the letter behind a paywall because it feels tender to share, which is probably why it’s taken me almost a year to do so. Every time I read it, I feel shame about how I saw and sometimes still see myself. It mentions the second book, which I still haven’t finished, not even close. I’m not even working on it, if you really want to know. Even so, I can tell you that I’ve come a long way since writing this letter, but I still have a long way to go. Will we ever get to the end of ourselves?
*clears throat* okay, here we go…