On… rejection

It’s not you. It’s me.

“The obstacle is the way.”
Marcus Aurelius (paraphrased).

@writersartistsyearbook judged their working-class writers’ competition* recently. It’s a wonderful annual contest that champions a genuinely under-represented demographic, and the small W&A team even offer valuable, carefully considered feedback to every entrant, even though the prize is free to enter and it must take them ages.

I was extremely confident ahead of the announcement. I know I very, very, oh-so very narrowly missed out on the longlist last year with my Millwall-influenced novel Delivery, and this year tried with Stalled, another novel I really believe in, which is influenced by my time running Lower Marsh Market in Waterloo.

The W&A competition matters. It’s one of the very few free-to-enter writing competitions also open to male writers. It’s well thought of and past winners have gone onto great things. And in the predominantly pay-for-access publishing industry, recognition in a competition is one of the only ways to get noticed if you don’t have the money or specific credentials required to get onto courses that put you in front of agents, or the significant spare cash to commission a freelance editor to work on your novel and spread the word amongst their network.

My plan was to use my win / shortlisting / longlisting as a reason to re-contact agents I haven’t heard back from about Delivery, remind some people who rate my writing that I still exist, get new people talking about my work, and generally use it as a springboard for querying Stalled in mid-2026.

I wouldn’t say I thought it was in the bag, but I was already drafting the announcement emails and social posts in my head…

And then I didn’t make the longlist.

Now I’m an emotional man with a colossal ego, and I also have strongly-held views about the publishing industry and its prejudices, demographics, and shared inherent belief that straight white working-class men are more likely to pick up a knife than a paperback. A few years ago my default would have been to lose my temper, blame others’ shortsightedness, descend into self-pity and assume everybody’s mates got picked ahead of me.

But I must be maturing. Because this year I got the ‘sorry to tell you’ email, and instead of swearing out loud about the injustice, I picked up a pad full of notes I’ve made from goal-setting books. And I started to think about things in a different way. I began to see the rejection as a blessing, rather than a curse. Here are the lessons I applied:

1) Look for the good in failure

This was a strong reminder of ‘never expect, because you can easily end up disappointed’. If I had been longlisted, it might have put more pressure on me to query Stalled faster to try to keep momentum, even though it’s not quite ready yet. Most of all, hearing that seventeen writers – seventeen! – made it ahead of me onto the longlist stung my pride, but that means there must be much talent in depth, and that’s what we’re going to need to open the door or kick it down so the Oxbridge lot stop publishing dark academia and set something in a supermarket instead. Seventeen new working-class writers with talent, in addition to the launch of The Bee literary, and new lower-income male-written fiction like Malc’s Boy out recently. Sounds like a working-class wave to me. Plus, I’m going to get some free feedback at some point – which in an industry like this, is as rare as rocking horse shit.

2) Point the finger at yourself

After the email I looked back at my submission and I saw complacency. I only had one person beta read my entry; I should have had more. The first scene is arguably over-written. The synopsis could have been tighter and even, on reflection, had a bit more flair in the language. My 200-word submission on why the prize speaks to me was perhaps too rant-y and male-focused – maybe I don’t have the right balance between ‘edge’ and ‘anger’ nailed... and that is a recurring theme for me. Food for thought.

3) The answer is purposeful action

Any human can control only two things; our actions and our thoughts. Response-ability (the ability to choose our response) is what lifts us above the animals. This time, I chose to ignore dejection and instead double-down on activity; writing more, looking for more author events, looking for more competitions to enter, offering to beta-read more work. I’ve already found new opportunities I didn’t know about, and more events that’ll help me with the craft. The bit is back between my teeth.

Rejection is a gift, because if things aren’t difficult, they are not worth doing. Failure and mistakes are the momentum behind growth, because they teach us what we don’t know, to stay humble, and how to be better. And when the way is hard, success is all the sweeter. Because success like that has been earned, not given.

Maybe missing out was a good thing, after all.

++ How do you react to rejection? And what lessons have you learned along the way?

Picture credit: Photo by Morgan Bryan on Unsplash.

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WHEN I was nine, 10 or 11, my dad took me to the Old Den for a night-time game. It was the typical Millwall drab encounter / game of few chances / war of attrition, and I remember another fan giving Steve Anthrobus dog’s abuse in a full five-minute diatribe, banging on and on about how he should be dragged off and replaced because he was ‘fucking useless’…

… before Anthrobus beat three players, banged a 25 yarder and hit the bar, and the fan admitted: “Well maybe he should stay on for a bit longer.”

The other night I was on a similar diatribe about Mihail Ivanović and his inability to hold the ball up so we could get up the pitch against a dangerous, intelligent, free-moving Coventry attack.

Then Femi Azeez slung over a cross and the BFS* finished it with a touch and lightness of foot you rarely see outside of the Bolshoi Ballet. I mean did you see the gracefulness of it?! Has the Ricoh Arena ever witnessed such beauty?

Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge…

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Do me a favour…

I started writing on Substack to share my thoughts and loves and argue there is a pressing societal need and a commercial opportunity for fiction that focuses on lower-income men.

If you like this blog or my extract, and would like more posts on new books, writing and the relative merits of Millwall’s attacking midfielders, please consider subscribing, restacking, liking, sharing, commenting, or sending me some feedback privately.

And if you hate my writing or disagree with me, send me a message too. I’d like to hear what you think.

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PS: In the city it’s alright.

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*You can read about – and hopefully support – the longlisted writers here.
**Big Fucking Serb