One lifetime is not enough, for all my words – Koraly Dimitriadis

Coping with rejection – the heartache of emerging writers

August 11, 2009 at 12:09 pm (Creative commentary) (rejection, Writing)

Since I didn’t get short listed for the Premier’s Literary Awards, I thought I’d write a piece on rejection. As I sat at my computer refreshing the State Library website on the date of the announcement for the hundredth time, a thought crossed my mind – how many times can a person refresh a website before losing their mind? It was at this point that I thought I better stop and just accept that the 0.0005% chance that I magically did get short listed and the judges just lost my phone number, was a mirage.

I guess the news hit hard because I actually thought I would at the very least, get short listed. Looking back, I don’t know why I thought that. Maybe it’s because I had never sent my manuscript to any of these big competitions before, so you could say that this was my virgin experience – and we all know our first time can be a bit of a letdown. If you have a read of the short listed participants, two of them are teachers of creative writing. How can I possibly compete with that?

While I was having my teary rejection episode, I received various opinions from other supportive writers: there would have been at least thirty really great novels and only three get chosen; or, it’s all about the judge’s tastes and can honestly just depend on what the judges ate for breakfast.

But it was what one of my mentors, Demet Divaroren said to me that resonated. I totally ignored her when she said it because at that point I just wanted to give up on writing.  It’s just so hard. I’m taking this gamble, dedicating years and years to something that may never pay off, and for what. It was only later that her words sunk in. She had said: “when one door closes another one opens”. Demet told me to have a look at the opportunities at Varuna, and I did, and suddenly, I was excited again, just like I was before the Premier’s Award. There are so many opportunities out there. And I don’t want to go back to working as a programmer. It’s so boring, and mind-numbing, and writing is a part of me, of my core, of my life. There is nothing else I want to do.

Writing is my life.

And that’s when I realised that my rejection from the Premier’s Award was a blessing in disguise. It’s my inspiration to keep going.

I am a writer. I can’t stop. I’ll get published, one day