maybe reward yourself for bouncing back!

https://www.thecut.com/article/writers-on-dealing-with-rejection.html

Rachel Khong I just feel really bad about it for a day and then I try not to think about it anymore. I mean, I think that being a writer is just a lot of endless rejection forever. It’s constant and happens throughout your whole career, if you’re lucky. Some definitely hurt more than others. It’s almost like applying for a job or something, where you start to imagine your whole future with this publication and then like … they just don’t want you. But I try to always think about the fact that you really only need one person, either an agent or publisher or magazine or someone, to publish your story. It’s not like you need everybody to love you. And I think, of course, there are the writers that are universally beloved. But that’s always been a reassurance to me — that there will hopefully be one person who gets it, one editor who really gets it, and that’s all you need. You don’t need ten publishers. What would even be the point?

Alexander Chee You have to let go of what your ego wants and understand what you’re looking for, the readers who understand you and get excited about the work. That’s where any momentum for a career comes from: finding those people. And you end up with something, a lot of times, that’s better than what you set for yourself as a dream. I think one of the major things that can happen, if you stay in it long enough, is you start to see how small your dreams were.