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Spice of life | Acceptance or rejection: Two sides of a coin of equal worth
For a writer, the joy of writing is, more or less, akin to pushing headlong through a sea of endless exploration in which waves of acceptance and rejection are bound to return in irregular turns
Ever since donning the mantle of a freelance contributor, my life has swung between two extremes, underscoring either acceptance or rejection by the revered first reader, the editor-in-chief.
Ask a soft-hearted pen-wielder like me how hard it is to take in a refusal: Regret our inability to carry your piece. It hangs threateningly over every article I send like the sword of Damocles. On the flip side, a reply in the affirmative: Pleased to accept your piece, pleases the depths of my being and I refill my pen to pour my thoughts out with verve and vigour.
There is no escaping the edginess after shooting off the final draft of an article and braving the interlude with bated breath. The anticipation of receiving the verdict stirs my mind into recalling and revising the overall import of my piece of writing as I stand before the eminent ‘judge of journalism’. A train of thoughts, as if without brakes, spins in the mind for fear of what if the gist of my piece, the voice of my writing or the grammar and syntax fail to strike a chord with hawk-eyed evaluators. I end up checking the email inbox and pressing the refresh key, hoping for an early verdict. The last-ditch attempt is to stealthily sneak into the spam folder just in case the golden words of acceptance find a place there inadvertently. I cope with the pangs of delay in receiving a revert by banking on hope.
Once, not hearing anything about two articles for almost a month, I quietly resigned to fate and slipped both of them into my roster of rejected write-ups. A few days later, I received two acceptance mails out of the blue. It was a double delight as I witnessed my hopes rise like the proverbial phoenix.
Rejections send me into silence to mourn the demise of a ‘piece’ of heart. Sometimes, I think it’s humane not to respond than sending a bitingly cold refusal in writing.
Today, the humble penman within is content to arrange published pieces together under the glass table cover to see them morph into a mosaic of experiences. My rational conscience doesn’t fail to acknowledge the constructive contribution of equally adorable pieces that breathed their last in the rejected stack for it laid a robust foundation upon which better write-ups could be inked and were deemed worthy of passing muster for printing.
Sailing through choppy waters of countless rejections and smooth rides of countable acceptances helped me discern both these terms were just two sides of the same ‘writing’ coin of equal worth no matter which side came up.
For a writer, the joy of writing is, more or less, akin to pushing headlong through a sea of endless exploration in which waves of acceptance and rejection are bound to return in irregular turns.
unsharma3116@gmail.com
The writer is a freelance contributor based in Una
