You Can’t Win ‘Em All
But Don’t Let That Stop You From Feeling Bad!
Rejection is very personal. The End.
But if I had to say more on this topic, I would say this: it also stinks.
There’s honestly not much more I could add to the rejection discourse that hasn’t already been said, and said better, so I’ll just leave you with a scene.
When I was first submitting cartoons to The New Yorker, I would squeeze out what I assumed to be the best and only cartoons I would ever come up with. “If this doesn’t work,” I thought, “then don’t know what else I can do.” I would submit cartoons on occasion, when motivation and inspiration managed to strike me at the same time. Usually it was over summer vacation, when I was off from teaching. It was not going well. But I was hopeful!
And then, one day, I heard some horrible news. I found out that actual New Yorker cartoonists were submitting batches of ten cartoons a week. Ten cartoons. A week. Ten a week. I was no math major, but I did some quick mental calculations and realized I was in a lot of trouble.
In an instant, the context in which I was operating expanded and lengthened like a hallway in a horror movie. I thought I was working hard. I had no idea how hard I actually had to be working. So, in quite the small voice, I said to myself, “umm, I guess it’s ten cartoons a week?” And it was only then that I started to get better. It was also only then I got rejected a heck of a lot more! I was producing more to reject! Ten cartoons a week. Rejected. Ten more, rejected. 1
To make a long story short (or at least save it for another newsletter) I somehow landed on the pages of The New Yorker. Which means I still mostly get rejected. But not always! But usually for good reason. Maybe the joke has been done before. Maybe the cartoon doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s just not for The New Yorker. Maybe it’s almost there but not quite. (And when it’s not quite, you can tell that there’s something missing. Something that’s supposed to be there.) Or maybe for a myriad of other reasons.
Still, I’ll never forget that moment I learned the truth about it all. I felt foolish. Sheepish. Silly. That I thought I was putting my best effort into it. In reality, I was meandering up a shallow incline thinking I was scaling a mountain. So I got down to business and worked harder, learned through rejection, and put in the time.
If I were wiser, I might extrapolate this lesson into other areas of my life. But I’m not wise. I just draw cartoons. So in honor of that old batch-of-ten, here are ten rejections that I love. I hope a few make you laugh!
Thanks for being here, and if you laughed, share with a friend! A loved one! A pet!
Thank you again,
-Steinberg
Luckily, it doesn’t quite have to be ten cartoons a batch anymore.
I digest rejection much better since I had to select works myself. I was programming films in festivals, and sometimes I had to "reject" very good movies and select less good ones. Because, very often, we create a program that must have a certain homogeneity, like a DJ would create his set, with a rhythm, a climax... There are many external elements to the work itself in our choices. And the incredible debates that I ever had during the selection commissions, make me admit that we must never forget the part of "personal preferences". Programming, and putting yourself in the place of an editor, is a very good exercise for artists, it allows you to question yourself, but also a certain "letting go". I enjoyed your newsletter~🌻
It was never clear to me that Bob expected 10 cartoons per week from anyone other than the regular stable of cartoonists. I decided that submitting batches of 10 made sense, though, just to demonstrate that I could hit that kind of output.