Overcoming Rejection
Feb. 28th, 2019 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingAbout a year and a half ago I was getting a lot of threats and other negative messages from a certain corner of the Zelda fandom, and so I wanted to counteract this negativity by being friendlier and branching out into other fandoms. An artist I’m mutuals with in another fandom had been posting about wanting to organize an art trade, so I offered to do one with her based entirely on her favorite characters in her main fandom. She flat-out rejected me.
Around the same time, a fanfic writer I admired was posting about how she was worried that what she created didn’t mean anything to anyone, so I drew fan art of one of her stories with a short caption saying how much I loved her work. She liked it, but she didn’t comment on it or reblog it. Together these two things destroyed me, and the general negative atmosphere on Tumblr wasn’t helping.
The point is not that the artist or the writer is a bad person for not being open to unsolicited attention from some rando on the internet, because that was totally their prerogative, but rather that it’s important to be realistic about what rejection is going to mean to you. People love to say things like “You don’t know until you try!” and “You should just give it a shot,” but you have to be honest with yourself. If, for example, getting your piece rejected from a fanzine is going to ruin your entire year and destroy your motivation to keep creating, then maybe you really shouldn’t submit anything to begin with.
In the meantime, it’s important to find a community where the emotional stakes aren’t so high. For me, this has meant posting my work on Instagram, where I knew no one was going to care about anything related to fandom. I started posting art (mainly Ganondorf and flowers) just about every day, and it didn’t matter if it didn’t get reblogged by the popular fandom people because that sort of culture just doesn’t exist on that platform. Meanwhile, I was really lucky to find a supportive audience in my family in Israel, who don’t speak a word of English or know anything about video games but still like everything I do on Instagram because they’re just wonderful like that.
For some people, finding a nonjudgmental community might involve drafting your circle of IRL friends into Inktober whether they can draw or not. For some people it might involve going to a weekly “drink and draw” meet-up hosted by a local comic book store. For some people it might involve making xeroxed zines that they can physically hold in their hands. While support is important, it’s not something you can count on, so the key thing (for me at least) has been to find a space where rejection isn’t an issue.
A safe space is important because what I really want to do is draw A LOT, every single day. I want to experiment, I want to draw a bunch of practice sketches that don’t look so great, I want to challenge myself, I want to build stamina, and I want to complete projects, even if they’re not worth putting in a museum or posting on Tumblr or whatever. If I’ve improved at all, it’s only because I learned to ignore the haters and start doing what I wanted to do just because I wanted to do it.
Around the same time, a fanfic writer I admired was posting about how she was worried that what she created didn’t mean anything to anyone, so I drew fan art of one of her stories with a short caption saying how much I loved her work. She liked it, but she didn’t comment on it or reblog it. Together these two things destroyed me, and the general negative atmosphere on Tumblr wasn’t helping.
The point is not that the artist or the writer is a bad person for not being open to unsolicited attention from some rando on the internet, because that was totally their prerogative, but rather that it’s important to be realistic about what rejection is going to mean to you. People love to say things like “You don’t know until you try!” and “You should just give it a shot,” but you have to be honest with yourself. If, for example, getting your piece rejected from a fanzine is going to ruin your entire year and destroy your motivation to keep creating, then maybe you really shouldn’t submit anything to begin with.
In the meantime, it’s important to find a community where the emotional stakes aren’t so high. For me, this has meant posting my work on Instagram, where I knew no one was going to care about anything related to fandom. I started posting art (mainly Ganondorf and flowers) just about every day, and it didn’t matter if it didn’t get reblogged by the popular fandom people because that sort of culture just doesn’t exist on that platform. Meanwhile, I was really lucky to find a supportive audience in my family in Israel, who don’t speak a word of English or know anything about video games but still like everything I do on Instagram because they’re just wonderful like that.
For some people, finding a nonjudgmental community might involve drafting your circle of IRL friends into Inktober whether they can draw or not. For some people it might involve going to a weekly “drink and draw” meet-up hosted by a local comic book store. For some people it might involve making xeroxed zines that they can physically hold in their hands. While support is important, it’s not something you can count on, so the key thing (for me at least) has been to find a space where rejection isn’t an issue.
A safe space is important because what I really want to do is draw A LOT, every single day. I want to experiment, I want to draw a bunch of practice sketches that don’t look so great, I want to challenge myself, I want to build stamina, and I want to complete projects, even if they’re not worth putting in a museum or posting on Tumblr or whatever. If I’ve improved at all, it’s only because I learned to ignore the haters and start doing what I wanted to do just because I wanted to do it.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-28 03:06 pm (UTC)I am so sorry you had those experiences with those two, particular individuals. I don't understand people who do that. Fuck 'em.
Also, I'm here for you drawing every day because you want to. That's an amazing attitude to have and I'll support it forever.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-03 12:49 am (UTC)But speaking of creepy! You know how SenshiStock is basically the same three women, right? I've been using their random pose generator (http://www.senshistock.com/sketch/) to practice anatomy and action lines and so on, and now I have almost four full notebooks containing nothing but sketchy portraits of these people, mainly the one with the pulled-back brown hair. It's like I know every detail of her body, and the creepiness of the fact that I just wrote that really just makes me want to wash my hands. Art is hard, and also very, very weird sometimes.
It's almost as if some people go to school for four years to learn how to do this sort of thing, you know?
no subject
Date: 2019-03-02 03:11 am (UTC)There's some good solid advice in here, though.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-03 01:01 am (UTC)It's kind of sad, actually. It's been difficult for me to find a good balance between creating and commenting, especially when it comes to fanfic. There are only so many hours in a week that I can spend in fandom, and it turns out that introversion doesn't go away when you're online. If I had to blame anything, it would be Tumblr, where the stream of content is so fast and so overwhelming that it requires serious effort just to keep up. You barely have time to create one thing before your work is buried under everything else, and it's impossible to choose one thing to comment on when there are just so many things. I can understand why bored teenagers with time to kill gravitate to the site; but, for an adult, it's almost like another full-time job.
Every once in awhile there will be a rumor that Tumblr is shutting down, and I know these rumors are always fake, but I can still dream...
no subject
Date: 2019-03-04 12:01 am (UTC)