How To Handle Rejection As A Creative? Well, this subject primarily aimed at anyone in music, but it can be applied to other fields such as drawing, animation, writing or whatever else have you. The reason I say this is because we all universally have gone through the pain of having something we spent our time, effort and love into being rejected by someone. It could be wanting to be a part of an animation, wanting to have something you wrote featured in an article or a musical piece you wanted to be featured in a project.

Regardless of the what the project was, it all comes back to us feeling that sting of rejection. Which is why I’m here to provide a few tips on how to prevent it from letting it stifling your progress. As I’ve seen some people get rejected and outright quit what they love because of that heartache and I feel this article should be able to serve at least one person well enough to prevent from fizzling out when it comes to rejection.

Ask For Feedback

One of the ways to handle rejection as a creative is to simply ask for feedback. If someone shot you down for a project you wanted to be done, politely ask them what made them decide to reject you and if you could get more feedback on it to prevent this from occurring again in the future. The reason why this is a useful tool to handle rejection as a creative is that you can use the feedback you receive in order to help mold your craft to better suit the needs/wants of other similar people/teams/companies that you want to be a part of in the future.

Furthermore, if the feedback is shallow, then you can weed out people you don’t want to work with or see if there was a circumstance which prevented them from taking you on their project. (I.E. understaffed, not enough money, already have someone producing things for them etc) You never know what might be going on when they make the decision to reject you, so it’s better to ask and see if you can get a reply as there is nothing worse than being in the dark about why you got rejected in the first place.

Enduring No’s: It’s All A Numbers Game

If you are trying to get your creative works featured in something, I feel you should get used to the word “no”. I say this because I come from the world of sales/marketing and I’m used to getting a lot of no’s until I eventually get that one yes that otherwise changes my luck around. Therefore, you should get in with the mindset that you will probably be rejected, but that it’s better to cast your net wide and take a chance then to remain in the same stagnant rut you are in. That is unless you don’t want your stuff featured in anything. Which is fine as well in my book.

Get Better

This is something you should be doing on your own time, but it goes without saying that you should always be improving your craft. I say this because if a project you really wanted to be a part of rejects you, you can always perfect your craft to the point of making them regret rejecting you. Do not let a single “no” stop your progression because if you do you’ll only be killing your creative drive and any potential you may have had if you stuck it out.

I feel this is important because I know for some it can seem like a death sentence. As, if you get a no, it can be mean that you will never overcome the barrier of skill/talent to get that yes. And I’m here to say that is a false perception and that it won’t be easy, but you can improve yourself if you work around others who are in the same lane as you. Find other creatives that are trying to better themselves, get their feedback, practice and study those above you until you get to a point where your work and art improves to the point where one little rejection won’t mind diddly squat to you.

Don’t Take It To Heart

Ultimately, don’t take any rejection to heart as there can be a wide range of variables which constitutes that result. We are dealing with human beings, and as such, you never know what is occurring in the background of another human beings mind and it’s best not to let that decision prevent you from moving forward.

If nothing else, you should think of the audience you do have and what they could potentially be missing out on if you were to cease making your creations. You could be a musician and that one fan of yours may miss out on your next hit because some jackass said no to your creations, or you could be a writer who failed to write the next article which prevented someone self-harming themselves because of a piece of motivational wisdom you wrote down in the moment.

No matter what, you have no idea what kind of effect the output of your creative work has on the world, so it’s best to keep this in mind after dealing with rejection and just to say, in conclusion: “fuck ’em.”