Handling Rejection: Advice from Margaret Atwood

It isn’t every day I get to ask one of my idols about writing. So, imagine my excitement last weekend while attending the Miami Book Fair online, when I realized the illustrious author and poet Margaret Atwood was going to take questions from the audience.

My mind, naturally, went blank—years of journalism experience asking pointed questions evaporating in an instant of fan-girl glee. Then came those cliched butterflies because This Was Margaret Atwood, literary giant, she of the Sharp Intellect and Acerbic Wit. I’d previously watched interviews of her in which wide-eyed, would-be authors  breathlessly asked for writing advice like lambs asking a wolf what’s for dinner. In response, she’d lifted an eyebrow and in perfect deadpan replied something along the lines of, “I recommend finding a pencil … and some paper.”

Savage, as my daughters would say. And accurate, of course. The best writing advice is to simply sit down and get to work.

Still, it’s been a tough year. As the world burns, writers are struggling to stay employed, inspired, productive. Even good news — fiction editors have reported an increase in book and short story submissions — means more of us are dealing with those form emails that politely say our project doesn’t meet their “needs at this time.”   

But surely, Atwood wouldn’t know anything about that. So instead, I asked her: “What was the hardest lesson you’ve learned as a writer?”

Her answer was humble, honest and blunt: Rejection.

“Let us go way, way, back to 1963 when I was submitting not only my first book of poetry, but my also my first novel, and they both got rejected,” said Atwood, 81. “The book of poetry was even worse because it had been accepted at first, but then the third person on the board had rejected it. So it was rejected after I told my friends [it would be published]. Humiliation!”

Even as Atwood’s career matured, rejection continued. Take her best-known novel, which has been made into a TV series on Hulu:

“The Handmaid’s Tale was not an immediate success. In fact, it got a real stinker of a review in the The New York Times,” she said. “[The reviewer] said, ‘Ha, ha, ha, that would never happen here. Not in the United States. Not us, not us.’”

Her advice: ignore it all.

“If you  believe the good reviews, you’re also going to have to believe the bad reviews.”

It’s always encouraging to hear that even your favorite authors have had to endure challenges. It was also nice to learn from Atwood that season 4 of The Handmaid’s Tale is being shot as we speak, and that the rights to her Booker-Prize winning sequel novel, The Testaments, have been bought. So we might see that story onscreen as well. 

Still, my favorite thing Atwood said during the evening had nothing to do with success or lack thereof. It had to do with the craft of writing and her new book of excellent poetry, Dearly. The moderator, New York Times Book Review Editor Pamela Paul, asked why she decided to write a book of poetry now.  

To which Atwood replied, “You don’t decide to write books of poetry, you decide to publish books of poetry. I always write poetry. I put my handwritten poems in a drawer and every once in a while, I … lay them all out on the floor and shuffle them like cards. And then it turns into a book or it doesn’t turn into a book. ”

In other words, writers write no matter what. It’s not really a decision, it’s a compulsion–a way to process the world or just bear witness. Everything that happens afterward (or everything that doesn’t) is beside the point.

Thank you, Margaret Atwood. In a crazy year like 2020, that’s exactly what I needed to hear.