For the past few days I have been sitting with rejection.  I applied for a master nonfiction class at a local creative writing center, and got rejected.  By a former professor, no less!

To say that this initially caused me to feel like shit is an understatement.

But then I started to look at it another way: I did not, in all honesty, submit my most polished work.  I submitted an excerpt from an essay in progress.  Maybe that was my mistake.  But I took a risk with work that I had not edited to death.  And for whatever reason, I did not make the cut.

As a writer, I’ve learned to live with rejection.  In 2004 I had a literary agent who was pitching a memoir of mine to editors in New York City, but she was not able to sell it.  At the time, it was devastating, but now, I know it was for the best because my book was not yet ready to be born.  If it had been birthed prematurely, it might not have survived. 

Others may reject us, but the important thing is for us not to reject ourselves.  I could have let that experience silence me.  But I won’t ever abandon my writing, or my dream of having a published book someday.  I know it is going to happen.  It’s not a question of how.  It’s a question of when.

I’m not trying to be egotistical here.  It’s just a simple faith in my vision.  I believe in myself and am not willing to forsake this dream I’ve had for as long as I can remember.  Yes, talent is important, but I believe that persistence will get me farther than any measure of talent I may or may not possess.  There are tons of people out there who are terribly talented, perhaps even geniuses, but their work does not see the light of day because they are too afraid to share it with the world — perhaps for fear of rejection.  That makes me sad, because the world is missing out on their important contributions.

Blogging has given me the ability to just write.  I don’t sit there and edit every other word.  I just let my mind go free and express what needs to be expressed.  After I write my post, I do go back and edit a bit.  But I don’t agonize over every word choice.  It’s not that I don’t care about craft, because I do, and when I write my essays and book material I take a lot of time and care.  Blogging is more immediate for me.  I feel like it is somewhat stream of consciousness and I like that, because I don’t know where it will take me, necessarily.

Before I sat down to write this, I took a hot bath and brainstormed post topics while I shaved my legs.  I thought of several candidates, but writing about this most recent rejection was not one of them.  When I sat down to the computer, this is what came out.  It’s what needed to come out.

I was thinking today how much this blog has nourished me over the past almost three years.  It has not only captured precious moments in my son’s life and my early mothering experiences–it has represented the evolution of my spirit over these past three years.  There are so many posts in which I don’t even mention my son or being a mother.  It’s just a woman moving through the world.  The woman who started this blog is within me, still, but in some ways I hardly know her.  That new mama reminds me of a child who never really had to grow up.  The experience of single parenthood has taught me how to grow up.  For the first time, I have had to take total responsibility for my life, and the life of my son.  This has been the most frightening and liberating set of experiences I have ever known. 

I don’t know how I would have even begun to make sense of it all if I did not have this blog.  As it was, I often felt like I was wandering alone in a pitch dark night.  Some days I didn’t know if I would be able to maintain my sanity (literally).  But I would write about that, in raw, scary, technicolor detail, and I would post about that, and people would write back and say, “keep going.  I believe in you.  Keep going.”