How do you deal with rejection?

I’ve recently been rejected. And not even by a boy. (That would imply that there had been a boy in my life to reject me. But I’m not bitter. 🙂 But I digress …)

Rejection is part of every author’s life, and after 2 recent rejections by publishers, I guess I’m really part of the writing club. But it doesn’t make it any easier to have a publisher say (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Lovely story, but we don’t like you, so we’re not going to offer you any money for your book. In fact, even if you paid us, we wouldn’t publish your manuscript, giving it covers and offering it to bookstores everywhere so people coule acutally read it. We think if we did that, buyers would be more likely to line their cat litter boxes with the pages than read it.”

I may have exagerated slightly here, but you get the picture.

So quite recently I’ve received news that 2 major publishers have rejected 2 different proposals, submitted by my agent on my behalf. This rejection isn’t unlike being rejected by a cute boy you’d like to date or not getting the job that you’ve dreamed of.

So how do you deal with rejection?

Seriously. I need your input.