Go for the No

How to keep moving when rejection rules your life

Here in Vermont, winter is long. It comes early, and it ends very, very late—usually spilling into summer with barely a blink of spring. On weeks like this one, in late February or early March, we get a thaw. The eye-high snow piles begin to shrink, the sidewalks are a mix of ice and slush, and the morning birdsong awakens dormant senses.

And then winter returns, often with a fury. Dumps of snow, stretches of icy temps, flat gray clouds. For more than a month. By April, I’ve come to doubt everything. Patience runs dry. I’m fully convinced that I’ll never see green again. I dream of other latitudes where I’ve lived, fully in bloom by now.

Spring never, ever comes when I want it to. Once it snowed on May 10th. But it does come. It always comes. And I live for that resurrection.

I tell you this because the Vermont winter is a good analogy for my writing career at the moment. I’m in one very, very long winter. In the case of my writing career, spring, has yet to come—ever. A big part of me doubts it ever will. And another, very tiny part, believes that if I just keep going, a shoot of green must break through the cold black mud eventually.

As with everything (remember this?), I track my writing submissions in Google Sheets. There is one for journal submissions, another for contests. For about three years now, I have been attempting to get my creative nonfiction essays and poems published—primarily in literary magazines. This is a self-taught process, and much of my struggle is likely due to the learning curve of how this world even works.

But here are some stats: 43 essays or packets of poems submitted. 1 poem accepted (that’s the one in my mentor’s book, Mother Becoming). 37 contests applied to. 0 won. 1 longlist, 1 shortlist, 1 honorable mention. 0 publications. In addition to writing submissions, I have applied to a handful of fellowships and jobs over the past few years. 0 offers. It’s not that many applications because, post-midlife-crisis (or midlife emergence as Jen Berlingo taught me to call it), I am very picky about what I want to do—and what I can do in fields that are completely new for me. But this means I’m also very deeply invested in each opportunity and devastated when I lose.

Devastation at losing is baked into my socio-cultural DNA. I am American, after all. I am also a middle-class white woman raised by a second-wave feminist mother to prove my worth to the world through exceptional achievement. Good grades, awards, good jobs. Upward mobility. For years, I lived with the understanding that if I work hard, doors will open for me.

It wasn’t until I had a kid that I really saw how B.S. that framework really was.

I had never worked harder in my life than when I had a baby, and society could care less. There was no correlation at all between effort and reward, hours of input and dollars earned.

Little by little, over the last five years, I have come to accept the messy math of motherhood. I know that the co-parenting tally will never equal out. I know that I can’t—and don’t want to—get back to the place I was in my career pre-baby. I know that I will never be fully understood, acknowledged, or compensated for my mothering in the way I’d like. And still, I would choose it.

Spring never comes when I want it to, but it comes.

I’m not there yet with the writing. I’m in the desert, and my faith is being tested. Sometimes, it feels like I’m getting closer. I’ll get what is called a “tiered” rejection. Instead of a form letter, the rejection will say how much they liked my piece, how far in the process it made it, or invite me to submit again. Last week’s job rejection was effusive about how much they loved my application and interview and how I was the clear runner-up. Always the bridesmaid.

I still think about the cruel irony of the only time an essay of mine had a publication offer to date—almost three years ago now. I had to refuse the offer because two days earlier, I’d learned that the same piece was a top-five finalist for a prize that included publication rights. A few weeks later, the grand prize was announced and the three top winning pieces were published. Mine didn’t make the cut. Three years later, no one else has shown any interest in that essay.

I am aware that no one wants to read a whiny rant. Instead, my intent here is—from the depths of this seemingly-endless winter—to find a glimmer of hope. To tap into why all this rejection matters, and why it will make me a better writer—and human—in the end.

I’m tempted to believe that it’s part of some grand project of the universe to kill my ego. Aslan had to be sacrificed on the stone table before the White Witch’s frozen curse could be lifted. This time in the darkness is meant to teach me to let go of my need for affirmation and approval, to shed my self-image as a good girl who gets what she wants, and to remake me as a humbler, more trusting artist. Several years and a great deal of mentoring into my matrescence journey, my view of motherhood matured. The upside-down math made sense. Perhaps the same will be true with my writing someday too.

If the ego, or a part of it at least, needs to die for the winter to end, then what does that leave behind? What new seeds are allowed to flourish when last year’s plants become compost? This is what I need to sort out. Without it, what will drive me to keep writing, keep publishing, even after my spring eventually comes?

Just like with motherhood, I don’t think my creative intentions will ever be purely selfless. I am human. I live in a capitalist society. I have too much to unlearn. But just like with motherhood, being a professional artist defies logic. It is supremely counter-cultural. Perhaps even a threat. It is something you do because a piece of your most primal essence won’t let you not do it. It is something you do because you want to give back to the earth community what it has given you—a window to beauty, a sliver of truth, and—as Mama Mary Oliver would say—a “place in the family of things.”

So off I venture into another day of “going for the no.” The icicles are melting. The snow is dimpled. I know there’s life under there somewhere.

AN ADDENDUM

Before doing a final read of this post and pressing “send,” I paused to attend one of my beloved and encouraging writing groups. In it, we shared our “wins” and talked each other through our frustrations. I left feeling, as I always do, bolstered and held. Before returning to this piece, I quickly checked my email. I saw a subject line automatically generated from Submittable, a commonly-used submission platform, and though, Oh no, not another one. When I clicked to open it, I read “Thank you for sending us…” Here we go. “We loved it and want to publish it.” Breath caught. Heart pounding. Then, tears. We loved it.

How’s that for serendipity?

With life, light, and love,

Devon

Held: Navigating the Journey into Motherhood starts Sunday, March 8th

Held is a 6-week course designed to help those in the first tender years of motherhood to restore, reclaim, orient, and integrate in the face of this dynamic life transition.

Part gentle yoga, part women’s circle, Held uses Jessie Harrold‘s Four Elements of Radical Transformation as a foundation to understand the journey into motherhood and takes an embodied approach to rebuilding the lost art of “the village.”

Held is for you if…

• You feel that your identity is in a state of flux, and you’re not sure how to navigate it

• You haven’t had the time or energy to process the monumental changes you’ve experienced

• You’ve had feelings of ambivalence toward being a mother that you’re ashamed to admit

• You feel lost, unmoored, or uncertain about the future

• Your friends and family have trouble understanding what’s different about you

• You crave some self-care, and yet you have a sense that this is about more than that

• You want community, but you don’t want it to feel like a competition

• You want to reconcile being a mother with being a human with hopes and needs and dreams

• You have a sense that there is a better way to approach this new phase of life, but you’re too overwhelmed and exhausted to figure it out

The Spring 2026 cohort of Held begins this week.

—March 8-April 12, 2026

—Sundays 2-3:30 PM ET

—In-person at Blossom Wellness in Montpelier, VT and online

—Sliding scale pricing