Fear of Failure | Karen Kao
We all fear rejection. To be the last kid picked for the kickball team or the only wallflower at the school dance. We long to be popular, wildly so, or at least to seem that way. This human desire predates likes and followers , obsession with crowd sizes or the invention of money as a measure of success. We are social animals. To survive, we need to be liked. the wall And yet writers are rejected all the time. You might say we seek it out. Every time we set pen to paper, there’s a near perfect probability of rejection, sooner or later. By the writer herself, the editor of a literary journal, an agent, a publisher, the readers at large. Sometimes you’re told in the most painful terms possible why you’ve been rejected. Usually, though, it’s silence that greets the writer every morning and lays down with her in bed each night. The silence that says: you’re a failure. Still, we write. If writing cannot satisfy our most basic human need, why do we do i...