So I got a rejection the other day that really bothered me. It burrowed its way deep inside my brain and hunkered down, having apparently made up its mind that this would be a lovely place to live. It wasn’t your typical sort of rejection. It didn’t come from a journal or an agent or a publisher. It didn’t offer any chance of personal feedback or the suggestion to try again. This was a rejection for a grant, an artist’s grant through the Ohio Arts Council.

When I applied for the grant, I knew it was a long shot. Only ten percent of the artists who apply, the application instructions said, receive funding. Still, I felt I had a decent enough shot that it was worth my time to put together the application materials. After all, the stories I included as my writing sample had all been published both in journals and in my award winning book, and two of them were nominated for Pushcarts.

The application process was complicated, the instructions poorly put together and lengthy. When it came time to mail the materials in, the grant instructions directed me to send the package to the wrong address, so, after my materials were returned to sender, I then had to hunt down the correct address, mail it priority, and hope I was actually finished this time.

Maybe it’s because it was such a time and energy consuming process applying for the damn thing that I started to feel an unwarranted sense of entitlement about this grant. I should definitely get this, I began to tell myself. Why wouldn’t I? I’m a good writer. I know people like these stories—there’s no gamble there. Only ten percent of the applications are approved, but just imagine how many of those come from amateurs who have deluded themselves into believing their not-ready-for-prime-time stuff is good. No way was I one of those amateurs. Nuh-uh. Not a chance.

Right.

I became so convinced I was going to get the grant, I started planning out how I would spend the $5,000—no joke! I was going to embark on a book tour across Ohio, and try my best to get my book in the hands of as many readers as possible. I could never afford to do something like that right now, but with that grant . . .

Of course, I didn’t get it. Incidentally, I knew I hadn’t gotten it before I got the email informing me of the fact. I knew because, in a series of events involving Facebook comments and the friend of a friend, I learned that the people who did get the grant had already been contacted. And I hadn’t heard anything yet.

So. When I received an email from the OAC, my heart only lurched a little bit. I opened it and scanned through, knowing already what I would find. The grant committee has met bla bla sorry to inform you bla bla bloo. They could have said, “Dear Amateur, quit wasting our time,” and the rejection wouldn’t have hit me any harder.

First, I was bummed.

Then, I was ashamed, very, very ashamed. For actually thinking I stood a chance.

Normally, rejections don’t really get to me, and even when they do, they don’t get to me as much as this one did. I had to talk it out with Damien—I don’t usually dwell on rejections, you see, so I don’t usually talk about them with Damien besides to say, “Guess who’s one point closer to Amazon bucks?”—because I knew if I said it out loud, it would seem ridiculous that I was so bothered. It did, and I felt better getting it out there, but I also realized that the reason this rejection hurt so much was because I had allowed myself to believe I was better than I actually am.

This is sort of the roller coaster of being a writer, at least this is how it’s always been for me. You have some smallish series of successes and begin to believe you must have arrived, or are at least well on your way. Then something happens—a rejection, a bad workshop, maybe even just the realization that the aforementioned successes don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things—and you’re knocked down a peg or two, maybe not all the way down to where you started, but certainly down to where you belong.

And the truth is, this is necessary. This is exactly as it should be. We need to be reminded that we’re not brilliant, that we do have to keep working very hard if we want those successes to keep coming. We need to be reminded that for every one person who likes what we’ve written, at least one (and probably many more) doesn’t. We need to remember these things lest we stagnate in our own hubris. Nothing is more damaging to a work of art, in my opinion, than the artist’s belief that he or she can do no wrong. If nothing else, our failures can motivate us to succeed next time, just like that old cliché: the only real failures are the people who give up.