In an article on Lit Hub, Vanessa Bee says spite helped her overcome rejection and find a home for her memoir.
When she pitched her memoir Home Bound, Bee found it difficult to find a publisher. She also had trouble placing articles that would have helped her build credibility as a writer. “I sent out original ideas but also tried to place excerpts of the memoir with editors in the demographic with whom I hoped the book would resonate,” she says. “More often than not, these editors either ignored my pitches or passed on them.” More than 30 editors passed on her book, including some whose work she admired. “Their message towards me was clear,” Bee writes. “I did not deserve a spot on the gatekeepers’ shelves.”
Bee finally found her publisher, and then began the long process of completing and editing her manuscript. “I felt the determination to prove wrong each of the editors who rejected me,” she says. “Indeed, there were times the only progress I made was buoyed by the desire to write a book so compelling that any editor who ever underestimated me would regret it.” Remembering her 30+ rejections created the spite Bee needed to get through her final edit. “I thought of my legion of rejectors many times in the year after selling my manuscript,” she says. “And here I am again, as Home Bound sets to enter the world, wondering if I have met my goal of putting out a work that will make my rejectors wish they could rewind time to claim me.”
Are anger and spite healthy motivations though?
Bee is grateful for her publisher and holds no personal ill will towards the editors who passed on her book. However, there remains a twinge of injustice. “I know that it would much more dignified to let my little fanny pack of rejections go,” she writes. “At the same time, it is a strange world in which writers must be above it all—a world where writers are expected to demure on how being overlooked really made them feel, because there is something inherently embarrassing about the anger, disappointment, or outright sadness that grounded their motivation after being rejected.”
There’s also a healthy side to writing for spite – pride in one’s work and its worthiness to be seen. “Rejection, however gentle and however valid, is still rejection,” Bee says. “I think writers should be permitted to take it personally, and to be open about it, when so much of writing is personal. Let them channel that spiteful energy into their work, if spiteful energy is the fuel they need to unlock their full potential.”
