Last night, I was speaking to a storyteller at The Moth during intermission. I hadn’t seen him tell a story in a while, so I asked why I might see him perform again.
“I’ve been doing this for three years,” he said. “I’ve never won. I’ve told more than a dozen stories, and I’ve never placed better than third. I can’t stand losing anymore.”
My response:
Rejection is part of the game. If you’re playing and competing in any arena, buckle up. Rejection and defeat are coming your way.
“Easy for you to say,” he replied.
He pointed out that I’ve won 62 of these competitions — more than half of the StorySLAMs that I have competed in, plus nine GrandSLAM championships.
“I haven’t won even one,” he said.
I pointed out to him that even though I’ve won a lot, I lose about half the time.
And I’ve lost two-thirds of the championships that I’ve competed in.
That’s a lot of losing to go alongside my winning.
Plus, I point out, I have written four entire books that no one has wanted. A dozen picture books that no one wants. I’ve spent years of my life writing books that will likely never see the light of day.
Yes, I’ve published nine books so far, and a tenth will be published next year, but I’ve also faced a lot of painful rejection in the writing arena, too.
It’s part of the game.
Two examples of this that I love:
As a young, aspiring writer in high school, Stephen King submitted short stories to magazines such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Every single one came back with a form rejection. Instead of throwing them away, he pinned each rejection slip to a nail on his wall—a visual reminder that he was doing the work, that he was in the game.
By the time he was 14, the nail could no longer support the weight—the stack had grown too thick.
His solution?
Replace it with a spike.
King wouldn’t publish his first novel, Carrie, until he was 27. At the time, he was living in a trailer with his wife and child, struggling to make ends meet. Unable to afford medicine for his sick child.
But he didn’t give up. He kept on writing.
King’s philosophy is a good one:
- Rejections aren’t a verdict—they’re proof of progress.
- Output matters more than approval.
- Persistence, not talent, is what separates the published from the unpublished.
The late Howard Frank Mosher, author of 14 books, once told me that whenever he received a rejection, he would tack it to the side of his barn and “shoot it to smithereens” with his shotgun.
“You should see the side of that barn,” he said. “Completely destroyed.”
Mosher wanted to destroy his rejections so he could symbolically move on. Destroying it as dramatically as he did gave him power over the rejection.
It also made him feel good.
I loved that.
I’m not sure if my storytelling friend will take the stage again, but I hope so. I liken his stories a lot. Audiences like them, too,
Staying in the game is essential.
I finished in third place last night, which is annoying. I loved the winning story, but I loved mine, too. I thought it had a great chance of winning.
It was one of those stories that was incredibly fun to tell.
But the loss won’t slow me down in the slightest. I’ll be back in Boston in a couple of weeks with a new story, and a week after that, in New York City with another. And a week after that, I’ll be on the big stage, competing in another Moth GrandSLAM championships.
Win or lose, I’ll be back.
I’ve been telling stories on Moth Stages since July of 2011. I’ve said 160 stories on Moth stages in four different cities. I’ve probably attended another 160 StorySLAMs, hoping to tell a story only to have my name remain stubbornly in the bag.
I’ve won a lot. I’ve lost a lot.
I’ll always be back.
I’m staying in the game. I hope my friend will, too.
