But no, my first-ever rejection letter threw me into a wannabe sci-fi writer’s funk. My career was over … why would I want to keep a written record of rejection?

Hey (insert self-deprecating shrug), I was 13 at the time. Puberty is notable for a number of things, including (a) myopic self-absorption and (b) less-than-stellar thinking skills.

The letter was a gem, too: photocopied crooked on a machine low on ink. I suspect the editor’s signature may have been photocopied, as well. A keep-sake if ever there was one. Alas.

I started high school a year later. Despite the Education Department’s cruel strategy of adding Grade 13 to the mind-numbing purgatory of high school, there were exactly zero (0) classes offered in creative writing. I took a lot of English classes – one each for Grades 9–12, and three in Grade 13 – without hearing a word about grammar, syntax, or punctuation. So, after a dubious attempt at a short story in Grade 9, my only notable output during five years of high school was a single haiku:

School really bugs me
My freakin’ English teacher
Makes me write haikus

(My teacher laughed out loud and gave me an “A.”)

After high school, I enrolled in a Radio, Television, and Journalism program at college, but not for journalism. I went there with a vague idea of emulating WKRP’s Dr. Johnny Fever, and I did have a blast as a DJ on our college radio station. The television courses were fascinating. My favorite aspect? The role of technical director in the production control room. Creativity + chaos = Deven’s happy place.

The creative writing volleyball? I kept it shackled in Davy Jones’s locker, submitting weekly articles to the college paper only because I had to. Yet, despite my lack of interest and work ethic (compared to my radio and television classes), guess where my best marks kept showing up?

I felt like Lady MacBeth: “Out, damned spot volleyball! Out, I say!”

Fast forward to a different college in a different province. Without planning to, guess who ends up writing an article or two for the college paper … voluntarily? And the following year, is named editor? You’d think the sight of a neon-colored volleyball punching its way to the surface – repeatedly – would qualify as a “sign” of some kind. And yet, after grad, I managed to submerge it again.

Looking back, it’s both fascinating and a little disturbing to realize how much clout my first rejection letter continued to wield.

Long after grad, the volleyball resurfaced when I began blogging. Things went well for the first three or four years; I was even “discovered” online by an acquisitions editor, who signed me to a book-publishing contract. A few months into the process, however, the marketing department torpedoed my book.

And that was that. Volleyball malevolently ruptured – a lawn dart dropped from the stratosphere is my favorite mental image.

In hindsight, I should’ve recognized the symmetry between my first rejection letter and this latest set-back. But I had the blocked-writer blues, so I abandoned the deflated volleyball on the beach, to be claimed by the receding tide.

A decade later … A raving, quasi-neurotic volleyball breaks free from its sub-aquatic fetters and explodes to the surface like a saltwater punch in the head. And this time — despite my fears, insecurities, and that nagging voice in the back of my head — I surrendered. I’ve been writing ever since. I have one answer whenever anyone asks me what I do: “I’m a writer.”

Creative writing might not be your thing. But if there’s a volleyball of creativity/passion that you’re squelching because (fill in the blank), take it from me:

Give up. Surrender. Embrace it. Don’t fight the volleyball. It’s relentless, has a mind of its own, and refuses to be silenced.

And should I ever find that first rejection letter again … I’ll pin it above my writing desk and use it as a dartboard.