Get Out There Like Gaga
August 5, 2022 § 23 Comments
By Jason Prokowiew
On the press junket for A Star is Born, compilation videos show Lady Gaga repeating the story of how no one wanted to cast her as an actor, but Bradley Cooper did. She said: “There can be 100 people in the room and 99 don’t believe in you. And you just need one to believe in you, and that was him.” Though I laughed at the repetition, I took the story to heart. If Lady Gaga could stomach rejection, couldn’t I? Is success a numbers game built around not giving up?
Today, I applied for a writing residency at Millay Arts as part of my commitment to submit my work 100 times in 2022, be it to residencies, fellowships, magazines, or potential agents or editors. As I hit submit on my second application to the program in four months after getting a perfectly nice rejection in May, I reached my goal five months early.
Before this year, I’d submitted my writing sporadically; each rejection knocked me off my game. By not submitting, I kept myself safe from the feeling of rejection…and also kept myself pretty safely removed from getting published.
As someone as dedicated to his weekly therapy sessions as he is his writing, I’ve tracked where this fear comes from with my therapist. Growing up as the fattest kid in my school, I was significantly ostracized from social circles. I was also clocked pretty easily by my peers as “gay” even before I knew I was. I lived that stereotype of the kid picked last in gym class—and picked on first.
In therapy I’ve considered how any sort of rejection registers not only as truth about my skills but also my very worth; whereas support for my work registers as luck or sympathy. For decades, I’ve applied this formula with almost no active thought.
When I was a junior in high school, I gained some traction with my writing, and my angst-ridden, coming-out poetry dominated the pages of my high school literary magazine, in a year when the magazine’s faculty advisor was a sabbatical replacement. When the regular advisor returned my senior year, I heard rumor that he was disappointed in the quality of last year’s magazine, where all my work had landed. I heard his rumored opinion as truth, and it was only in this past year, in my forties, that I challenged these thoughts, and recognized that his “nay” felt like an indictment of my fraudulent posing as a writer, and an absolute truth. As a second example, when I was applying to college writing workshops, one professor told me I wasn’t ready for her advanced, selective classes. Another admitted me to his courses and encouraged me for years. I wondered, though—was the first professor honest and the second merely kind?
Between 2004, when I began tentatively querying agents about my memoir, and the start of 2022, I only submitted my work to about 20 agents or publications. Each rejection felt like a validation of what the naysayers said, and I slinked back to my laptop, trying to muster courage to try again. I often didn’t find it.
Recently I’ve been encouraged by the writer Emily May, a member of my writing group, who published a piece last fall that had been rejected more than a dozen times. I asked her about her resilience and saw the image of her on our Zoom workshop explaining that with each rejection she brushes off her shoulder and says, “Okay, next,” and tries again. If my brave, talented colleague could move past rejection, couldn’t I?
I also felt ready this year—weekly therapy sessions on the schedule—to face rejections, feel my way through them, and decide what to do with them: let them be the end of trying or just brief hurdles. Each rejection got easier and sank in far less. I’ve practiced brushing off my shoulder like May, and it felt good, a reminder that I can choose to give opinions the weight of dust or the world.
So far, in my year of 100 submissions, I’ve received 49 rejections, 19 acceptances, and have 32 pending submissions. After some of my work was published, I connected in new ways with estranged my family, often featured in my writing. I’ve been to a writing residency in Tennessee where I wrote two new pieces, an essay and a book review, that were accepted for publication. I have six more residencies on my schedule in the next 18 months. I’ve received eight full manuscript requests from agents, and recently recorded a story I wrote for an episode of the television program Stories from the Stage. The benefits of putting myself out there are great, but more importantly, the fear that once stopped me from submitting—the fear of the omnipresent “no”—doesn’t stop me now.
That “one out of 100” person I needed to believe in my writing was me.
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Jason Prokowiew earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from George Mason University. He’s the author of Raised by Wolves, a braided memoir about his Russian father’s adoption by Nazis during World War II and how his father’s trauma carried into parenthood. His writing has appeared in Scene Magazine, Edge Media, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti. He recently graduated from GrubStreet’s Memoir Incubator. He’s received residencies and grants from Sundress Academy for the Arts, Prospect Street Writers’ House, Gullkistan Center for Creativity, Write On, Door County, and a Contributor Award in Nonfiction for the 2022 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He runs his own law office dedicated to disability advocacy.
Jason, your essay about rejection made me smile, chuckle, and tear up because I can connect to some of your reasons and fears about rejection. About a year ago, I decided I needed to submit more not less. I was also encouraged to learn about the different levels of rejections. When I reread my rejections, I realized I had a few of those. That felt almost as good as an acceptance. Thanks for this piece! Lady Gaga would love it.
Thank you for the comment, especially the idea of “levels of rejection,” it’s so helpful to think about that aspect of the process.
Hello Jason, Great essay! And one I needed to hear. Thank you. All the best. Jerry
Thank you, Jerry…I’m actually encouraged by all the comments here and to know the rejection aspect of writing is something we’re all sharing. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one and it’s good for me to remember that’s not true.
Keep writing and remain positive no matter what. And it’s so true what Lady Gaga said! I find myself saying the same words to family and friends
Thank you, Elaine, it’s a useful lesson to share with our family and friends for sure!
Just what I needed to hear, exactly when I needed to hear it. Thank you! And congratulations on your “overcoming”! 🙂 rp
Thank you! I’m glad it was something you needed to hear just now!
Hey, Jay, you are a mensch! I dropped out of my first MFA in 1978 in England, but continued writing poetry sporadically, and became a social activist and lawyer during my career, which ended with a three-year federal prison term in 2012. Now I am writing and podcasting (with little success but know it is good. Success is an illusion in the life of the artist. Like fame, it adds nothing to the value of the work (except money!) While the work is its own reward. Thanks, brother. Eddie
Thanks, Eddie, we are brothers in writing and the law, glad to find you!
This is an excellent piece of writing. I love the way you show something of yourself while talking about the process and business of getting published.
Thank you, Stacy!
Congratulations on your incredible acceptance record—and you are not even done for the year!
Thank you, Jan! I appreciate the comment and I’ll keep on submitting! We’ll see what the number reaches by year’s end.
The post is amazing. It is very inspiring and impressive. Thanks for all the details and well thought points.
Hamid Modjtahed
Hamid Modjtahedi Sindhi
Thanks again. You are awesome!
I loves it.
Hamid Modjtahed
Hamid Modjtahedi Sindhi
Thank you, Hamid!
Thank you for sharing all this with us. Like others who have responded, I, too, am inspired by your honesty and your commitment to yourself and your writing. Thanks for showing us also shy-of-rejection writers how to do it.
Thank you, Judy, I’m touched by all the comments and to know this resonated with other writers. I’ve often thought it was just me struggling with the fear of rejection, and it’s heartening to find you all.
Thanks for your insights about rejection: any sort of rejection registers not only as truth about my skills but also my very worth; whereas support for my work registers as luck or sympathy. Dang! So obvious and true. I’ll try to keep them in mind.
Your piece was very inspiring! Thanks.
Thanks for sharing! I have found that repeating, “I am not my writing,” in the face of failure and success helps ground me. I believe I learned this tip in “Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg.
This is an amazing post! Very informative for me. Thanks .
Hamid Modjtahed modjtahedi hamid Sindhi