What did actress Nia Vardalos, former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman, author Joanne Harris and director Edgar Wright discover that they had in common recently? They have all been rejected multiple times – and, what’s more, they’re proud of it.
Vardalos revealed that she was dumped by her agent for “not being pretty” and told by her manager “actors can’t be writers”. A year later, she starred in her first screenplay, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Blackman said she received 82 rejection letters before she was published. Later, she was told that her novel Noughts & Crosses had been rejected for a literary award because “it would have shown more insight if a white author had written it”.
Harris was sent rejection letters for what would become her bestselling novel Chocolat that described her manuscript as “too parochial” and “too European”, advising her to set it in the US and “dump the food”.
Wright revealed: “I was passed over for a TV commercial to be done in the style of Spaced, even though I was the actual director of Spaced.”
Usually, the connection between rejection and success is kept private. But a public outpouring recently on social media – not only by celebrities but by others using the #ShareYourRejections hashtag – questions why this is so. What is there to fear from rejection? And why do some people seem to cope with it better than others?
Jia Jiang spent 100 days seeking out rejection and then wrote a book about his experiences, Rejection Proof: How to Beat Fear and Become Invincible. “I realised my fear of being rejected was worse than the rejection itself. I started losing my fear and having fun instead,” he said.
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