Video: Dealing with Rejection and Criticism (My New Book)

Is it possible to succeed as a creative professional without having to deal with rejection and criticism?

Is it normal to be afraid of being judged by others? If you experience this fear, how can you deal with it?

How can you tell whether a given piece of criticism is valid or not?

What’s the best way to handle criticism?

How can you build resilience and bounce back from multiple rejections and biting criticism?

These are some of the questions I answer in this video interview recorded with Joanna Penn.

(If you’re reading via email, you may need to click through to the original post to watch the video.)

We recorded the video to mark the publication of my first full-length book – Resilience: Facing Down Rejection and Criticism on the Road to Success.

I wrote the book to help creative people deal with two of the biggest obstacles they face:

• Rejection – by editors, agents, producers, interviewers and other gatekeepers of opportunity
• Criticism – by gatekeepers, critics, audiences and anyone else who feels entitled to express an opinion

Jo is a successful novelist and independent publishing expert, so in this video I focus particularly on the challenges faced by writers in relation to rejection and criticism – but most of these are relevant whatever creative field you work in.

(If you are a writer you should definitely check out Jo’s blog, it’s one of my favourites.)

You can read the first five chapters of Resilience in the preview window below. (Again, you may need to click through to the original post.)

And if you want to read the whole book, it’s available on Amazon UK, Amazon US and elsewhere.

Finally, a personal note: my journey as a professional writer started nearly seven years ago on this blog.

Publishing a book feels like a significant milestone, so I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has read my writings in various places since then – your feedback and encouragement been incredibly helpful in getting to this point, and have definitely made Resilience a better book.