So They Didn’t Say Yes: How A Scholarship Rejection Taught Me to Work Smarter

By Natalie Schriefer

Three years ago, I graduated from my MFA program. I wanted to hit the ground running, so right from the start, I crafted myself a ritual: around the first of each month, I’d spend a morning scouring listservs and social media for writing opportunities.

I tracked submissions calls, literary magazines, scholarships, and fellowships. On a massive spreadsheet I noted dates and fees. I even drafted outlines to scholarship questions ranging from the specific How will this fellowship benefit your writing? to the vague Give us a sense of where you are, right now, as a writer. 

For the first time I asked myself, outside of the structures of school or work, what kind of writer I wanted to be.

I didn’t know. What I wanted was to get a lay of the land. I wanted to see what opportunities existed so I could figure out which ones made the most sense for me. 

When I started focusing on emerging writer scholarships and fellowships, I was prepared for rejection. I knew the odds were against me. I liked the challenge, how publishing required a perseverance similar to competitive sports like tennis, my first love. 

To combat the inevitable rejections, I brought my favorite mug, and my favorite herbal tea, to my monthly ritual, a little self-care to keep me grounded in what I knew would be hard work.

Early on, this worked. I didn’t mind the rejections—or the endless essay questions, each one just different enough so I couldn’t easily reuse them on a future application. 

Maybe I didn’t mind, at first, because I had a taste of success early. I’d submitted to only a few scholarships when I won my first (partial) fellowship: through their Queer Writers fund, I received a steep discount to the 2020 Summer Writers Conference hosted by the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.

Anything felt possible, in that moment. Winning full scholarships, submitting to big magazines, even finishing my YA novel about asexuality—I could handle anything, including rejections, as long as it was punctuated by wins like this.

Except it wasn’t. I’d go nearly two years before winning anything else.

I wrote a lot of application essays in those two years. I used a spreadsheet to track my submissions, and the more rejections I received, the redder that spreadsheet became. I was embarrassed. I had an MFA—wasn’t I supposed to have everything figured out?

Of course not, but that was hard to see amidst the torrent of rejections.

With each thanks but no thanks, it got harder to justify the time commitment. Those scholarship essays served no purpose other than in their applications. They vanished with each rejection, and so did the hours I sank into them. Maybe it was time to move on. 

Then I applied to HippoCamp 2021. Their essay questions changed how I looked at all other application questions, moving forward.

A conference hosted by Hippocampus Magazine, HippoCamp awarded scholarships based both on financial need and by asking about the best advice applicants had ever received. 

Mine had come from an English teacher. “Listen to your intuition,” he’d told us. “The first thing it’ll say is ‘No.’”

At 16, I didn’t understand what he meant. A few years later, working 57 hours per week, I heard that “No” for the first time on a run. I understood then, chest heaving, that I couldn’t continue living that way. That “No” returned me to writing.

Ultimately, my essay didn’t win a HippoCamp scholarship (though it did get me a free copy of their CNF craft book, Getting to the Truth). I wasn’t surprised—submitting to anything is a numbers game, after all—but I kept thinking about my essay afterwards, how it had felt strong and complete. Like it could stand alone, outside the application. 

For a while, I didn’t know what to do with it. I’d open up the document, stare at the blinking cursor, and then close it out. Then I found a site that wanted pieces about inner wisdom. With minor tweaking, I sent my former scholarship essay to The Wisdom Daily. 

To my delight, they bought it.

Did that essay cover my rent that month? No, but as a writer new to pitching, it boosted my confidence. By early 2022, some eight months after not winning that HippoCamp scholarship, I was pitching outlets like Wired and Ms. Magazine—and getting assignments.

The experience taught me that no words are ever wasted. Rejection didn’t have to be the end of the line for those scholarship essays. 

Sure, I could’ve dropped that intuition essay into my “Applications” folder, like the others. I could’ve let it languish there forever. But I wanted to submit to more freelance publications, and I’d already done the hard work of writing and editing that essay. Why not take advantage of that?

Why not look over all my old scholarship essays—and repurpose the best ones?

Reframing those essay questions as an opportunity to grow as a freelancer changed how I interact with application forms. They don’t feel like a waste anymore. Now they feel like a beginning.

In the meantime, I haven’t given up on scholarships. I’m still an emerging writer, and I’m still figuring out who I want to be—and that’s okay. I don’t need to have all the answers. I just need to keep applying to the opportunities that make the most sense. 

After all, it’s okay if I don’t win. Who knows where this year’s rejected essays will end up?

Natalie Schriefer, MFA is a bi/demi writer from Connecticut. Her work has appeared in NBC, Wired, MTV, and Ms. Magazine, among others. Though she didn’t make the cut in 2021, she won a Friends of Hippocampus Scholarship for HippoCamp 2022. Say hi on Twitter @schriefern1.