How to get rejected for creative success: Set a target and keep going

The path to success is paved with rejection, but have you considered making a Rejection Goal one of your New Year’s resolutions? Sheena Barrett, curator at Dublin’s The LAB Gallery, has been on the giving and the receiving end.

Are all rejections equal?

The easier ones are the most frustrating at first, says Barrett. “But they’re also a cleaner cut, so they heal more quickly. Like when you forgot to tick a box, or were late. You’re out by default. Harder rejections are more nuanced: when you’re good but just not the right fit this time. It’s harder for person delivering the feedback and the person receiving it,” she says. “It’s this strange space where I can’t actually tell you how to improve, because what you’re doing is right, it’s just not right for here, for now.”

I want to crawl under a rock when I get turned down

Think differently. Rejection isn’t easy but it’s more difficult, perhaps for artists, because their work comes from such a personal place. While you might try to tell yourself: it’s not me getting rejected, it’s the work; for many artists, their work is themselves. The first strategy is to get practical. Barrett quotes an artist she knows, who says: “rejection is part of my practice.”

Huh?

Rejection means you tried. Rejection means you put your work out there. Some artists make an application day – one day a week, or a month, spent applying for things – part of their calendar. “I read about Marlon James,” says Barrett. “He won the Booker Prize in 2015. But his first novel was rejected so many times, he deleted it from his computer. He would have spent so much time writing it, fine tuning it, sending it out, even finding places to send it to. Then receiving all those rejections, and the non-responses. But he picked himself up to go again with the same work – which he found as an attachment in the sent items in his email.”

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“It’s such an illustrative example because it shows rejection doesn’t mean the work is wrong. It’s about how you navigate it. To be an artist you have to have an incredible sense of self worth. You have to in order to keep going, in order to be able to be in a place of playfulness, and authenticity and experimentation; to continue to feel that this is valid, and this is worth doing in the face of everything. And then you have to take your head out of your studio and send off this entirely speculative proposal and face rejection.”

So what is the Rejection Goal idea?

Set yourself a target. Aiming for 100 rejections a year means applying for two things a month. And you never know, you might not make your goal. If a gallery is programming, for example, 12 slots annually, Barrett estimates that they’ll have to reject at least five times that amount of viable proposals, so it’s often a question of timing. But take care; while we’re getting all Teflon to rejection, it’s important “to find the space between self belief and being open to critique, in order to nurture yourself and your practice”, says Barrett.

As the year turns, she suggests we all take a leaf from the Dublin Fringe Festival, whose Fringe Fundamentals, published this year, includes the phrase: Failure is Fuel. “It’s just such a nice way to think about things.” Fuel for thought for a happy new year.