With All the Rejection, When Should I Lose Hope?

The reality of looking for work as a writer.

Taru Anniina Liikanen
5 min readNov 29, 2024
Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Yesterday morning, I got home from the gym, threw myself on my bed, and let myself feel bad.

You’ve got five minutes, I thought, and allowed the anxiety I’ve been feeling for months to take over me. It did. In deep, desperate sobs. Mouth open, wailing into nothing, I cried, wondering if I’ll end up on the street soon.

I had just received another rejection from a low-paying junior content writer job, after nearly ten years of working as a writer and after seven months of unemployment.

A couple of days prior, a query rejection on my novel from an agent had also dropped into my inbox.

This same week, I had also been rejected, twice, from an acting gig for an institute that promotes the consumption of Argentinian meat. It involved eating steak and talking about how great it is.

Dear reader, I’m a ten-year vegan.

But I had accepted the job because I can’t afford to say no to anything right now. Even something that is ethically wrong to me, not to mention disgusting.

And yet, I was rejected. Again.

Being a writer or creative of any kind requires thick skin. But there’s a point where you get…

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Taru Anniina Liikanen
Taru Anniina Liikanen

Written by Taru Anniina Liikanen

Stand-up comedian and recovering political ghostwriter. Finnish by birth, porteña at heart. Bad jokes frequent.

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