Janet Muirhead Hill Explains Why Writers Are So Sensitive to Rejection

Janet Muirhead Hill, author of the Miranda and Starlight series of six books and Danny’s Dragon, a story of wartime loss, is a member of Women Writing the West.

As a seasoned writer she’s a good resource in going behind the scenes of a writer’s psyche to explain why we writers are so sensitive to rejection and criticism.

Tomorrow she’ll go on to give us some sound advice on how to spring back when we feel knocked down from unappreciative response to our work. –JGR

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I believe the writer is a special breed of person—one with extraordinarily acute vision, talent, and passion. From the writer’s pen flows, not mere words, but an outpouring for the writer’s soul similar to the travail—and the joy—of giving birth to an infant.

A writer may feel a defensiveness of her verbal creations not wholly unlike the maternal protectiveness experienced when someone criticizes or threatens her offspring.

Blessed is the writer who can emerge undaunted from the paralyzing blow of sharp criticism. Naturally, her tender heart bleeds from the onslaught of arrows shot at her work—her babies. A writer’s equally tender ego takes the full force of those arrows and is wounded by their sting.