Rejection’s a part of life, especially if you’re a creative person who makes (or hopes to make) a living selling the things you create. The more stuff you send out into the world hoping someone will love what you created as much as you do, the more things come back to you, their wings a little singed and droopy, carrying a sign that says They don’t like me, they really really don’t like me.

Well, that’s not necessarily true.

Case in point: this year’s playoff round on The Voice.

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere (or you just don’t watch The Voice), this is Blake Shelton’s last season as a judge. After 23 seasons, he’s taking a well-earned rest from coaching some amazing contestants, trading barbs with Kelly Clarkson (and Adam Levine before her), and making hard decisions to send some truly phenomenal contestants home.

The Voice changed some things up this year. Instead of having America vote for the top two artists on each coach’s team to go through to the lives, with each coach selecting one final member of their team to compete in the lives, this year each coach has to pick two of their remaining five artists to go directly to the semi-finals. Maybe it’s because this year is Blake’s last and they don’t want only his artists to dominate the finals (at least one time that I can remember, three of the four finalists were all Team Blake), or just because the show likes to shake things up, or pick any one of dozens of other reasons known only to the bean counters at the network, the end result is that it’s up to the coaches to send three team members they’ve specifically chosen home.

To say that this has been hard on the coaches is an understatement.

Take what happened to Chance the Rapper on the first night of the playoffs.

Chance is one of two new coaches this season (the other is Niall Horan), and he’s proven to be an outstanding coach, both in being able to spot contestants’ hidden talents in the blinds as well as selecting and arranging music to showcase the best of their abilities. As a result, the five members of his team (including Sorelle, a trio of sisters) are such kickass performers in their own lanes that any one of them should already have a solid if not outstanding career as a professional singer.

The first night of the playoffs featured Chance’s team and Blake’s team. With the exception of one singer who had a barely noticeable shaky start, the rest of Chance’s team not only nailed their performances, they had the audience in the palm of their hands. Kala Banham’s heartbreakingly beautiful version of “My Funny Valentine” actually made Chance cry (me too). The other three coaches all agreed that Chance should move her on to the semi-finals.

That was before Ray Uriel took the stage. His vocal ability stunned all the coaches, and again the other three told Chance there was no way he shouldn’t move Ray on to the finals.

Then Sorelle took the stage. I think of them as the rock version of Girl Named Tom, the trio that won season 21 of The Voice, but they’re far more than that. They’re performers who engage with the audience like seasoned professionals. They’re the whole package, and their performance in the playoffs brought down the house.

And again, all the other coaches told Chance that Sorelle had to advance to the semi-finals.

Uh oh. Chance could only send two of his artists to the semis. He had three contestants who all deserved to and possibly could and would win The Voice, but he could only send two.

It’s an impossible decision.

Blake’s decision was only marginally easier. On the second night of the playoffs, Kelly and Niall found themselves facing similar impossible decisions.

I won’t spoil who these coaches chose, although if you follow The Voice and are ready to watch the semi-finals live tonight, you already know. (If you don’t, you can look here and here for videos of the contestants’ performances and the results.) The point is that the decisions the coaches made were tough. (Kelly even told her team that the playoffs weren’t the end, even for the artists she didn’t choose. She credited Blake for that.) Contestants went home who deserved so much more. Who might have even won in a different season, but this season? The talent on the show has been outstanding.

That’s what happens to creatives every day. We send out work that’s stunning. Outstanding. Easily in the top one percent of what’s out there.

And it gets rejected.

Sometimes the work will come back with an encouraging note, a “send us more of your work,” but more often these days you’ll just get a form rejection or even silence broken only by the sound of crickets chirping. (I think the no-response rejection is incredibly rude).

It’s easy to think that your work’s no good. To think that it sucks, or to get annoyed (hopefully only momentarily) at whatever gatekeeper said no. Kala Banham, the singer who made Chance cry, for goodness sake, had been bounced from coach to coach to coach and she was outstanding. Yet Chance had to say no.

A few years back I had the opportunity to edit a professional anthology that had a very specific theme. My publisher gave me a strict word count and strict marching orders. I could pick eleven stories, that was it. The anthology was invitation only. I easily got four times as many outstanding stories as I had slots for, all of them written by professional writers.

How to choose? It was an impossible task, as I’m sure anyone who’s ever edited a professional anthology or fiction magazine can attest.

Eventually, I did choose. I developed my own criteria, what the coaches on The Voice would call “lanes.” Wasn’t easy. It broke my heart to say no to stories I loved, especially since I had to say no to the writers in an open workshop setting.

Rejection’s not easy to take. Just ask Kala Banham. Or Michael B, who Kelly called a finale singer. They’ll be watching the semi-finals tonight instead of performing, and not because they did a damn thing wrong. The competition this season’s just flat out amazing.

So keep that in mind when your work comes back to you with a “sorry, but no.” Try again. And keep trying. You’re a pro. The competition out there is amazing, and sometimes that rejection has absolutely nothing to do with your work.

One final note regarding The Voice.

For whatever reason, the results of the semi-finals are going to be announced live at the end of tonight’s competition. For those of us on the west coast of the U.S., unless our cable provider offers an east-coast feed, voting will be all over by the time The Voice airs on the west coast. (sigh) Kind of like the old Twitter instant saves, which also cut out the west coast viewers.

If us west coasters want to vote for who’s going on to the finals, we’ll be voting based on the contestants’ prior performances. Okay, that’s not horrible for some people, but it would have been for contestants like Bryce Leatherwood, the winner of season 22. Bryce kept getting better and better week to week and peaked at just the right time to edge out the previous frontrunners and win the whole shebang.

What this means for a viewer like me, a west coaster who never voted in the Twitter saves because I didn’t want to know before I watched the performances who was going to end up in the bottom—well, it takes the fun out of finally getting some actual audience participation. Oh, I’ll still watch the semi-finals, but there’s no reason to watch them live (well, prerecorded for my time zone).

I’m going to Guardians of the Galaxy 3 tonight instead. I’ll be home in time for the big announcement at the end of The Voice, and then I’ll go back and watch the whole thing. Sometime later.

In the meantime, good luck to all the semi-finalists, and good luck to all of us who send our work out there in the world. And keep sending it. Rejection’s never easy, but sometimes—probably most of the time—it’s really not about you.

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Copyright © 2023 by Annie Reed

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