On Rejection (on Substack)

And how to embrace it

These three (Sweets on the left, Baby Theo on the right, sock toy in the background) will never reject you—never

Before there was Substack, there were gatekeepers (editors, agents, award committees, etc.) who held all the power in the literary world. Being rejected by them felt like a verdict on your work. These people knew good writing and could spot a novice a mile away. (Novices, for instance, often use cliches, which I just did though I’m not a novice, just loving the freedom of writing on Substack and using the occasional cliche.) In many ways, a rejection from a gatekeeper was a verdict and an accurate one.

Enter Substack. There’s still plenty of rejection—the absence of likes, shares, and restacks; emails unopened; people not subscribing or unsubscribing—but it’s a different flavor. Subscribers …