You’re Not a Loser: Advice for Emerging Writers

By Jessica Terson

Years ago, I wrote a personal essay for Cleaver Magazine exploring why I persisted in dating total losers. Read the first few paragraphs of that essay and you’ll find a laundry list of questionable lovers. Whether I was dating a man with a heroin addiction or one with a tendency toward violence, I could always poeticize falling in love with a scumbag. And although I ultimately acknowledged that I dated losers because I thought of myself as a loser, I left out an essential detail. Why did I feel that way?

Writers often feel like losers too.

Last night, I received a distressing phone call from a girlfriend. She had just received her fourth rejection letter in a single day. “I feel like such a loser,” she told me between tears. “It’s bad enough getting rejected on Tinder.”

Then there’s my coworker. She never broke down crying. But she did mention that everyone from her old graduate school, besides herself, has a book deal. She said this while we laid out pastries at the coffee shop where we both make minimum wage. “I just keep thinking, am I wasting my life? Do I have what it takes to make it? Or will I be here ‘til I’m sixty?”

And it’s not just women who suffer from self-doubt. A man whom I went to graduate school with—over a decade ago, mind you—recently posted a Facebook status bemoaning his lack of success in creative writing. Thinking back to our graduate school days, I can’t help laughing at our naivety. I suppose I always saw myself winning the National Poetry Series straight out of school. Universities would line up outside my front door and beg me to come work for them. Sooner or later, someone would nominate me for the Nobel Prize. So you can imagine my horrified surprise when I spent the next decade blindly sending off work to literary magazines and receiving nothing but form rejections in return.

Maybe a professor should have warned me. A thesis advisor at DePaul University Chicago once told my girlfriend that she was more likely to get bitten by a shark than become a professional opera singer. Sound harsh? It is. But it’s also reality.

Luckily, in the last few years, I’ve learned to adjust my expectations. Like many other writers that I know, I aim to receive 100 literary rejections a year. That’s right: 100. One-hundred rejections means 100 submissions. And the more I submit, the more likely I am to find a journal that enjoys my work.

When I wrote my essay for Cleaver Magazine all those years ago, I hadn’t published anything in over a decade. Since then, I’ve received enough rejection letters to cover more than a wall in my living room (apparently, wallpaper rejections letters are actually a thing). But I’ve also had some success. Every year I add a few more publications to my name. And in December, one of my poems will appear in The Georgia Review. It’s not the Nobel Prize, but it’s a pretty good start.

Once I learned to make peace with the fact that writing was going to be hard, and that publishing was going to be even harder, I felt like less of a loser. Partaking in the various writing support groups available on Facebook also helps me to feel less isolated. It turns out that most creative types feel like losers, even the ones who find frequent success.

Success won’t happen overnight. The chances of winning a big prize or a book deal straight out of graduate school are probably slim to none. More likely, you’ll get enough rejections to break your heart (so take my advice and don’t double the pain by dating scumbags). There will be days—and these never completely go away—when you’ll consider giving up completely. But don’t give up. You’re not a loser. You’re just an artist figuring out the best way to proceed. It’s a hard road, but it’s worth it. And in the meantime, think of all the things you can decorate with those 100 rejection letters. I’ve seen way worse wall paper out there.
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Jessica Terson’s poetry has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, New Orleans Review (web feature), River Styx, River Teeth Journal, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.