Magical Overthinking

On Rejection, Resilience, and the Road to Recovery

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

One of my former writing students is the king at sending query letters. He challenges the small accountability group we formed, pushing everyone to submit, and it helps, even me, as I look for a new agent.

Recently he challenged everyone in the group to submit three queries by Friday (four days later). He sent more than that; in fact, as a writer, he’s the most consistent at querying that I know, even when he gets a rejection letter on a Sunday… for a query he sent on Saturday.

“It’s a numbers game,” he says, which is what we teach, but for many of us, the numbers game is demoralizing.

How do we send out one more letter when we feel, like Norm in the television show Cheers, that “it’s a dog-eat-dog world, Sammy, and I’m wearing Milk-Bone underwear.”

If anyone can snap defeat out of the jaws of victory, it’s Norm, the television equivalent of Eeoyore, but when we’re looking at one more rejection in the inbox—or worse, one more agent who doesn’t respond—it’s easy to get deflated. I’d go so far as to say that’s normal, and we all handle it in our way.

Magical thinking

When I was thirteen, my father died. He had been twice my mother’s age when they married, so even though I was young, he was not. I didn’t handle his death well. I skipped most of the eighth grade. I read constantly to escape reality, and at night, I dreamed that he wasn’t dead. I don’t know how long that went on, but I’d wake up and for a few moments, I could almost believe that he was just on a long work trip.

That kind of magical thinking didn’t change the outcome, but it did help ease the pain until I could accept his death and the ensuing grief.

Grief comes for big things and little: It’s grief for the potential we envision with an agent or publisher; it’s grief for the novel whose options we fear are dwindling; and with really deep, dark systemic struggle, it might be grief for the life we imagined for ourselves.

Even as adults, we continue to practice magical thinking, hoping that that cop didn’t just clock us going ten miles over the speed limit, that that problem brewing at work will resolve itself, or that if we don’t think about it, it’s not real (skip work, read a book, and deny-deny-deny). Or, we lie to ourselves about the book we’re going to write but never do.

Magical overthinking

As writers, we have pretty great imaginations, and we misuse our storytelling skills by imagining the worst possible scenario in just about any situation. Like a murder suspect, all we need is the means, motive, and opportunity.

Sometimes I worry that I’ll never write again. Never mind that I’ve been writing seriously for a decade and have ten published books. Magical overthinking does not require reality, thank you very much. It is fed with fear, an overactive imagination, and self-doubt. Add time. Wait, it’ll come.

We, like Norm, can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory every time. But as you’re spiraling, remember that one defeat is not the end of the story.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work". Edison, on inventing the lightbulb

Photo by Dallas Reedy on Unsplash

Like Edison, we must say, ‘I did not fail. I found one way (or a dozen ways) that did not work.’

So this rejection, this story, this novel, this genre didn’t work for you. You only fail when you quit.

Resilience

I’m sure some of you are feeling deflated for myriad reasons, some writing-related and others not.

It’s late fall, the days are shorter and darker, and students and coworkers alike are feeling seasonal or situational sadness. Rejection, in whatever form it arrives, feels like a giant toddler screaming “NO” at the top of their lungs. Some of us just want to crawl back in bed and stay ‘til spring.

Trust me, I also want to find a nice cave somewhere to write my magnum opus in hermetic silence, but I also know that would never work for me. I need people. I need community, so we’ll just have to find a new way to accept the situation.

No matter the cause, give yourself a day to grieve. No judgment. Take the time you need unless or until it becomes avoidance because that’s the kind of thing that will give you years of not writing as a result. Then practice resilience until it becomes a habit.

Resilience is the ability to adapt to and overcome difficult situations while maintaining psychological well-being. These writing prompts help you to see the whole situation, adapt to it through writing (as most writers intuitively turn to writing during hard times), and create a new plan of action to get through the next time, because if there is one thing that is certain in writing and publishing, it’s that not everyone is going to love your work, so rejection is not an if but a when.

Writing Prompt

*Adapted from Dr. James Pennebaker’s Writing to Heal.

• Process what you feel. Take 20 minutes to write about it. Put all your ugly emotions on the page, even the ones you don’t want to acknowledge or admit to anyone. You can burn the pages or rip them up later, but for now, be honest. Lying to yourself serves no purpose.

• Reflect on why you feel this way. Take 20 minutes and write about the why. Think about how this relates to other areas of your life. For example, I have this great ability to overthink. Quickly when necessary. At 5x the speed in an emergency. Years ago in a car accident, the first thing that came to my mind was that I had to pick up my kids in another state in two days, and my car was toast. I was in serious panic mode. I wasn’t worried about the moment. I was worried about a future problem that might or might not be real. Thinking of it that way helped me to stop the panic and focus on the immediate problem: getting home.

• Take a step back, and for 20 minutes, write about the situation from an outside perspective. How do others view you in this situation? How do they handle a similar situation? What can you learn from this outside perspective?

• Take a bigger step back, and for 20 minutes, write a more balanced narrative of the situation. Incorporate other viewpoints and the outside perspective. Sometimes considering these multiple perspectives helps you reach a more balanced (and psychologically healthy) reaction.

• Then create a plan, so the next time you’re in this situation, you have a step-by-step guide for how you will avoid the pitfalls. For example, when I’m submitting, I try to keep at least three things out at one time, so if I get a rejection, I can shrug it off because I have at least two other opportunities still out in the world.

Once you make a plan, I’m going to suggest that you put your big-girl panties on and get back to work. Someone is waiting for the book that only you can write.

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Cindy Skaggs is a writer, book coach, public speaker, and military veteran who holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University and an MA in Creative Writing from Regis University. She is an advocate for military and veteran issues, mom to two humans, and an armchair traveler. She is a native of Colorado where she teaches graduate and undergraduate creative writing.

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