Climb ev'ry mountain ...

... But bring some snacks. Going up a mountain and receiving feedback are both hard.

Two writing rejections this week but I'm going up a mountain tomorrow (Yr Wyddfa) which puts everything in sharp relief.

The trip to Snowdon was slightly up in the air, and could have been cancelled at the minute, so the rush to put together the lightest toiletries bag possible, while packing gifts for friends, was a gleeful process - not least because the news the trip was going ahead came within an hour of the latest rejection.

I always say to emerging writers that the trick to dealing with rejection is to have a full life so that there's always something coming on the conveyor belt to pay attention to. I should listen to my own advice

I'm always prepping for rejection. Which is either a brilliant coping mechanism or a horrible maladaptation. Perhaps both?

So whenever I have plans with friends, I'm always planning what to do if they bail. I imagine the conversation/ exchange we'll have and so get to practice being graceful and unbothered by the last-minute cancellation. What's good is that it stops me being irrationally angry at a late notice change of plans that was probably nothing to do with me. The downside, is that it stops me from serving my own needs, meaning I internalise the disappointment at a last-minute cancellation of plans, and think I deserve to feel that way. Boo!

Bizarrely this informs a lot of my own thinking surrounding creative feedback and its cousin - rejection.

Over time I've learned to make space for the thoughts and feelings that arise when receiving feedback or even an outright rejection. Indeed yesterday, I told a friend I was going to take a 'rejection nap' after some bad news and to their credit, they didn't question what that is (note to self, copyright Rejection Nap.)

Often, receiving brilliant, insightful feedback, can feel like a mountain you need to climb, without a map, or any understanding of the length or difficulty of the climb. Understanding it intellectually is not the problem: it's figuring out how to put it into action. That's where the real skill comes in, where the work really begins.

Which is why there's a delicious irony in knowing that as I'm on the train to Wales tomorrow, I'm going to be rereading my own feedback and trying to figure out a way to move forward with it - just as I'm getting ready to climb a different sort of mountain.